


Forewarned: Arena

by VampireBadger



Series: Forewarned is Forearmed [3]
Category: Persona 4, Persona 5
Genre: Gen, I'm attempting to write the P3 cast, Persona 4 Arena, Persona 4 Arena Ultimax, it's happening guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:14:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 32,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26553433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VampireBadger/pseuds/VampireBadger
Summary: Set between Forewarned and Forearmed, covering Persona 4: Arena, and Persona 4: Arena Ultimax.A few months after Yu leaves Inaba, he comes back to spend Golden Week with his friends.Akira's looking forward to seeing him again. He is, really. Except that now they've all been dragged into a fighting tournament in the TV World, and he's not sure what he's going to do if he has to fight Yu.
Series: Forewarned is Forearmed [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1767610
Comments: 72
Kudos: 326
Collections: Marigolds Discord Recs





	1. Chapter 1

Akira and Nanako have been counting down the days until Yu's Golden Week trip to Inaba. Literally, counting down the days--Nanako had marked it on the calendar, and they've made a half-joking and half-serious ceremony out of crossing the days off in the evening. 

The first time Dojima had seen this, he'd rolled his eyes and shaken his head, but he hasn't ever said anything about it, and Akira has noticed that if he's home when they go through the one-less-day-until-Yu-comes-home-ritual, he'll put his newspaper down and watch, even though he's pretending not to. Akira knows he's looking forward to getting to see his nephew again too, even if he _is_ the only adult in the house, and the one that has to pretend he's above all the excitement.

"So what do you all have planned for the days Yu's here, anyway?" Dojima asks, the evening before Yu's arrival. "Are you going in?" He tilts his head, ever so slightly, toward the TV in the corner of the living room. It's a new one, bought only a few weeks ago when he realized that if Akira _isn't_ going to stop making occasional trips to the TV World (which, he isn't) it's better to make sure he has a way in and out from inside the house.

"Maybe," Akira says brightly. "But we don't have to. It's not like there's anyone that needs saving, or anything."

Dojima makes a noncommittal noise, the same one Akira has come to recognize over the months since Dojima found out what he and Yu have been doing in the TV World. It means _I trust you to take care of yourself_ but also _I still think this is dangerous and you should be more careful_. 

"He might just want to hang out, anyway," Akira says. "And it's kind of hard to catch up with people when you're fighting Shadows at the same time."

This time, Dojima's nonverbal answer is slightly more approving, and Akira decides that it's probably a good idea to not try and defend the TV World trips right this second. Dojima is the adult here, and of course he's going to worry about them getting hurt while fighting Shadows. Akira's job, as resident Trickster and also as a bored twelve year old, is to not let that worry stop him from occasional Shadow fighting trips into the TV anyway.

...which doesn't mean that he's _ignoring_ Dojima's worry. There's a difference between being careful, and just being stuck at home.

What he says instead is, "We probably won't go in while Yu's here. He only has a couple days before he has to go back to Tokyo, and nothing interesting has happened in the TV World for _months_ , so we don't really have a reason."

"Good," Dojima says. He picks up his newspaper, unfolds it, and takes on the slightly distracted tone that means he's already focused his attention on the article he's reading. "Then at least I won't have to worry about the three of you for the next few days."

"It's okay," Nanako pipes up. "I'm sure Akira can find plenty of ways to get into trouble without ever going into the TV at all!"

Dojima puts the newspaper back down, and looks at both of them with a frown on his face. "Well when you put it that way," he says. "I think I _am_ worried."

And so Akira spends the rest of the night being lectured on all the ways he is _not_ supposed to be getting into trouble. He is _not_ supposed to wander off somewhere and not tell anyone. He is _not_ supposed to participate in breaking and entering or trespassing of any kind. He is not supposed to go picking fights in the TV World, or in the real world for that matter. He is not supposed to get dragged into the nefarious plots of any potential kidnappers and/or murderers, should any appear, because that is what the _police_ are for Akira, are you listening? And he is _definitely_ not supposed to get mixed up in any more nefarious plans about letting Inaba be consumed by an alternate Shadow dimension.

"That one's not fair," Akira complains. " _Adachi_ was the one doing the plotting last year. And I wasn't the only one trying to stop him."

"I know," Dojima tells him. "But I _do_ think you're the only one that's likely to go running into something like that without thinking it all the way through, if it ever happens again."

Akira squirms, because the thing is that he just _might_. Sure, if it's not too urgent and they're around, he likes to think he'd go to the Investigation Team for help. But he knows himself well enough--and _Dojima_ apparently knows him well enough, too--to know that when there's any kind of trouble around, he has a bad habit of getting completely tangled up in it.

"Okay," he says. "Okay, but--but what if it's really bad? Like, there's no time to tell you or anyone, and the world's about to be destroyed, and I'm just trying to _help_ \--"

"You just told me that the TV World has been quiet," Dojima reminds him. "So do you think that's actually likely to happen?"

"No," Akira admits. "I just mean... I don't know. Sometimes I can't help getting in trouble. Sometimes it just happens."

"But sometimes," Dojima says. "I think you _can_ help it, and you choose not to try."

Akira smiles sheepishly. 

"And yes," Dojima adds, with just the slightest undertone of sarcasm to show that he thinks Akira is being slightly over the top. " _Obviously,_ if the world is about to be destroyed and you really need to do something to help, that would be an extenuating circumstance."

Nanako giggles, and Akira fidgets a little in his seat.

"But that's not going to happen," Dojima says. "Is it?"

"No," Akira admits, and then feels obligated to add, " _Probably_ not."

"Just try to behave yourself," Dojima tells him. "And get to bed, alright? Both of you."

And normally Akira would have complained about this, except that Yu is coming tomorrow and he kind of just _really wants to get to tomorrow already._

So he says goodnight to both of them, heads upstairs to his room, and gets himself ready for bed.

When he drops off to sleep, the last thought he has is that for the next few days, this won't just be his room--it'll be his _and_ Yu's again, just like it was last year.

Which is a good last thought to have before falling asleep.

-//-

It's only been a few months since Yu left Inaba, but it feels like years. He'd gone back to Tokyo, and discovered that he doesn't _fit_ there anymore. His old school, his parents, his life--it's like the city has moved on without him, and there's nowhere he wants to be but Inaba. He can feel it, the second he gets back, like a small part of him unconsciously relaxing. There is... _something_ about Inaba that always feels a little bit different than being anywhere else in the world. Last year, Inaba had been half consumed by the TV World, and that leaves its mark. 

It's not a bad feeling, though. Inaba had been hurt, and then it had been healed. Something in Yu recognizes the scar, and resonates with it, and it welcomes him home.

His friends and family had offered to come to the station to meet him, but Yu had turned them all down. There's no reason for them to go out of their way to meet him, and he doesn't mind the relatively short trip from there to Dojima's house. If they'd come to meet him, it would have felt--in a weird way--like he's just a visitor here. Like he doesn't belong.

So he heads home on his own. On the way there he sends out a few texts--first to Dojima, then to Yosuke, both saying his train had gotten there and he'll be at the Dojima house soon. The third (sent only after a few seconds of internal debate) is to his mom.

> **Mom**
> 
> Just wanted to let you know that I got in okay

There's no immediate reply, which doesn't surprise Yu much. His parents had been confused when he first asked if he could come back to Inaba to visit. His dad (who had met his mom after she left town) had thought that Yu was joking.

His mom had been angry when Yu insisted he was serious.

 _That place is nothing_ , she'd told him. _Why are you wasting your time there?_

Yu has never given her an answer. There are all kinds of things he _could_ have said, things like _my friends are there_ or _you never gave Inaba a real chance_. But he's... angry about the fact that she's angry, and says nothing instead.

> **Mom**
> 
> I'll be back at the end of Golden Week
> 
> I think we should talk when you get home

The response sends a spike of anxiety through Yu that has become much too familiar over the past few months. He _knows_ that he'd changed during his time in Inaba, and he knows that he likes himself more now than he had before. Unfortunately, his parents only see _change,_ and they want him to be the same person he had been when they last saw him.

There have been a lot of arguments.

> **Mom**
> 
> What about?
> 
> Your school guidance councilor reached out to me about your college plans
> 
> They are not acceptable

Well.

Well, _crap_.

He'd been really thinking he had more time before this conversation happened. Eventually, yes, his parents were going to learn what his post-high school plans are. He hadn't thought the school would actually send something home--or at least not this soon. He tries for several minutes to think of a good way to answer, and in the end he can't. He'll see her at the end of the week. They'll fight about it then. For now, Yu's not going to let it ruin his time here. 

Deep breaths. Don't think about them for now. He stuffs his phone into his pocket and focuses on the street in front of him. His feet have taken him nearly to the Dojima house without Yu's brain consciously being aware of it. He's almost home, so he thinks about that instead of the imminent fight waiting for him when he gets back to Tokyo. He goes around the corner and down the street, waving at familiar faces as he walks. And then he's home, walking up the driveway and smiling at the thriving vegetable garden in the side yard. Looks like Akira and Nanako are still at it. 

He raises a hand to knock at the front door, but before he has a chance, it opens--Nanako flies out and wraps her arms around him, shouting something that's made incomprehensible by the sheer weight of her enthusiasm. Akira's only a step or two behind her, grinning so widely it almost splits his face in two, but clearly trying to act cooler, like the almost-thirteen-year-old he is. From inside the house, Dojima shouts at the two of them to give Yu some space and let him come inside, and gradually Yu is able to make it across the threshold. 

"Welcome back," his uncle says.

"Happy to be here," Yu answers. 

His phone buzzes in his pocket, with what Yu's afraid is probably a reply from his mom. He ignores it, and by the time Dojima has brought out dinner (store bought of course, because some things just don't change), he's actually managed to put the problems with his parents out of his mind.

Dinner is more talk than food--there's a lot to catch up on, even after only a few months. Nanako talks at length about the second grade (which she loves), and Akira is eventually coaxed into admitting that his first few months of middle school have been going a lot better than his time in elementary school had. He's making friends, studying and even joining the baseball team.

"That sounds unbelievably normal," Yu tells him. "Who are you and what have you done with our Trickster?"

"He's been getting into plenty of trouble on the side," Dojima assures him dryly. 

"Less than last year," Akira says.

"That is a low bar to clear," Dojima says.

"Dad pretends he's upset about it," Nanako tells Yu. "But Akira wouldn't be Akira if he wasn't getting in trouble."

Akira looks immensely proud of this, and Dojima only barely annoyed, and Yu gets up under the excuse of clearing the table, hiding his smile by retreating to the kitchen. The bickering behind him is something he's missed. It could not be more different from the arguing he has to deal with at home.

"Akira," Dojima says. "Help Yu bring his stuff up?"

"Yep!" 

Yu hadn't brought too much--he's only here for a few days--and they get it all up in one trip. Yu pauses in the doorway, taking in the familiar room. It looks... pretty much the same as it had a few months ago. Akira has obviously moved from the sofa to the futon, and it's a little bit emptier with only one person living in it. Other than that, it's the same. A little bit cleaner, maybe--it looks like Akira has made an effort to clear things up before Yu got there--but essentially the same.

Yu's eyes land on the old TV in front of the couch, and he asks, "Have you been watching the Midnight Channel?"

"I'm staying up until midnight on rainy nights and watching the Midnight Channel _not happen_ ," Akira says, dropping onto the couch and glancing out the window. It's raining, and Yu knows that the same thought must be going through both their minds--they're going to have to watch tonight.

The sun has only just gone down, so they have plenty of time to kill before midnight. That's fine, though. The two of them had shared this room for a year, and there's no awkwardness now when they sit around and talk. Time flies by, and then it's five minutes to midnight. Akira has been laying on the couch with his legs hanging off the edge, but he sits up now and makes room for Yu to sit next to him.

"Nothing's happened at all since you left," Akira says. 

"I know," Yu says. "I've been getting updates from Yosuke."

He knows that it's over, obviously. He _knows_ that it is, but--

But what if something happens anyway?

The clock ticks on, and both of them look up at it until, finally, the time reaches midnight.

And the TV turns on.

-//-

Because Akira hadn't started working with the Investigation Team until very late last year, he hasn't actually spent too many nights sitting up and waiting for the Midnight Channel to air. He just hadn't known it was important at first, and by the time he and Yu had actually started being honest enough with each other to watch together, everything was almost over.

But he's still seen enough of the Midnight Channel to know that this is not how it normally works.

The picture on the TV is bright and clear, not at all foggy like the usual images. And there's _music_ , and a _voice over_ , someone shouting in the background about a fighting tournament for the Investigation Team--they're all there in the video, looking angry and violent, except for Teddie (who seems like he's in charge?), Rise (who doesn't appear at all), and Akira (who is still not sure if he's _technically_ on the team, and also isn't in the video).

"What?" Akira says, when it's over.

Yu is still staring at the TV with his mouth slightly open.

"Why did everyone have terrible nicknames?" Akira asks. "Because that announcer guy called you _the Sister Complex Kingpin of Steel_."

"Trust me," Yu says. "I heard that. "I'm trying to not think about it."

The TV has gone blank again, and both of them are just kind of staring at it in baffled confusion. After another several seconds, Akira asks, "Why didn't _I_ get a weird nickname?"

"Do you want one?"

"No. I just feel left out."

Yu gives a little snort of laughter, and shakes his head and reaches for his phone. "I'm going to call the others," he says. "I have a feeling we're going into the TV World tomorrow."

"Should we tell Dojima?" Akira asks. 

Yu pauses with his hand over the phone. Both of them look down at the floor, as if they can see right through it to the first floor room where Dojima sleeps.

"We'll just go in and check things out first," Yu decides. "If anything's actually really wrong, we... we'll tell him after."

"Makes sense," Akira says. "Sure. We'll tell him later."

There's nothing else for him to do, so while Yu finishes his phone calls and makes plans to meet up with everyone at the Junes food court tomorrow, Akira makes himself comfortable and gets ready for sleep. Hopefully, he thinks, Dojima won't be _too_ mad about being left out of the loop.

On the other hand, he's sure this is something they can handle.

Pretty sure.

He sleeps well enough considering the circumstances, wakes up cramped, and leaves early for Junes with Yu before anyone else is even awake. Dojima and Nanako will probably _both_ be annoyed, but Yu points out that it's better to meet up with everyone early, and maybe even get this figured out in time to spend part of the day doing something _normal_.

"Then we'll come back and apologize," Yu tells Akira when they're safely out of the house and on their way. "And explain."

Akira nods. As far as he's concerned, sneaking out of the house is pretty low on the list of things he usually gets into trouble for. "When we do get around to explaining everything," he says. "Am I still not supposed to talk about the _Sister Complex Kingpin of_ \--"

"It would be really great if you could not mention that," Yu says quickly, and Akira grins. He has no idea what a kingpin of steel is, and only a vague idea of a sister complex, but he _does_ know that it embarrasses Yu, which means that he is morally obligated to mention it at every possible opportunity.

"I'll do my best," Akira says, trying to sound innocent.

Judging by the long suffering look Yu gives him, he doesn't manage to pull this off.

Most of the group is already at Junes when he and Yu get there, but Teddie, Rise, Naoto, and Kanji are all missing.

"Aren't they coming?" Akira asks, when the meeting just starts without them.

"Naoto's on some kind of case this week," Yukiko explains.

"Oh," Akira says. "Sure." He does live in this town, after all. He's at least aware enough of local gossip to know that she's often out of school on mysterious detective missions. He just hadn't known that she was out of Inaba _now_. It feels like bad timing. "But what about everyone else?"

Yu, Yosuke, and Chie share a complicated look over the table. Akira really hopes they're not about to lie to him.

"None of us could get in touch with them last night," Yu admits.

"Oh," Akira says. "Well that's--a bad sign." He wonders if their disappearances has anything to do with them not getting dumb names on the video last night--but no, Naoto and Kanji had both been on the Midnight Channel even though they're missing now, and Akira hadn't been on even though he's _not_ missing.

"I think we're just going to have to go into the TV and see what's going on for ourselves," Yu says, standing up. 

"So we're reforming the Investigation Team?" Yosuke asks. "I mean--we're going back into the TV World, and this is--I don't know _what_ this is, but there's definitely a mystery here for us to solve."

Yu considers this for a second in silence, then nods. "Yea," he says. "If everyone's okay with it, I think we can consider the Investigation Team officially reinstated until we figure out what's going on here."

There's a few smiles at this, and a chorus of agreement, and the rest of them stand up too. This is definitely a bad situation (with three people missing and unaccounted for, it couldn't be anything else), but it's obvious that getting the Investigation Team back together is making everyone feel at least a little bit better.

It's making _Akira_ feel better, and he's not even 100% sure he counts as part of the group.

The general feeling is a little bit more upbeat as they head down to the electronics section and go straight for the TVs. There's nobody down there shopping this early in the morning, which makes it easy for them to head through. Yu goes in first, followed by his friends, and Akira brings up the rear. There's the usual feeling of free fall, and then--

And then something that does _not_ look anything at all like their usual landing zone inside the TV World.

This is Yasogami, isn't it? Akira's been there a handful of times, to meet Yu, or for the school's culture festival, things like that. So he is _vaguely_ aware of what it looks like, and what it looks like is... well, it's kind of like this. But also kind of not, because there's a kind of menace in the air that Akira has never seen in any school, and posters for something called the _P-1 Grand Prix_ , which is the same thing that the announcer had been talking about on the Midnight Channel last night.

So... definitely the right place? Akira just doesn't know where that place _is_ , or what he's supposed to do now that he's here. He also doesn't know why no one else is here, even though he'd watched them go in through the TV right in front of him. 

He's kind of getting a bad feeling about this, but Akira takes a deep breath and reminds himself that it's not as bad as it could be. He's _definitely_ in the TV World--he's masked and costumed and that's enough to confirm where he is--so that's good. In the _real_ world, he's a first middle school student with a reputation for trouble and not much else.

Here, at least he has Persona and weapons to fight back against any trouble he might run into.

But also no one to back him up if (or honestly, _when_ ) he finds that trouble. Whether it's the Investigation Team, or Yusuke, or Lavenza, there's almost always someone with him when he's fighting Shadows.

So... maybe the sooner he finds everyone, the better. Akira takes a second to orient himself, to feel the reassuring weight of his daggers at his side and the Persona in his mind, and then he heads down the hall of the school.

-//-

It takes him some time, to get anywhere.

Akira had landed in a hallway full of classrooms( he isn't sure which one, because the signs outside all the rooms that _should_ show the class numbers just say P-1 instead) and although the way forward _looks_ clear, it is not. There are invisible walls in every direction, not blocking _every_ path forward, but definitely limiting his options. It's like moving through a maze he can't even see, and the longer he spends trying, the more frustrated he gets. 

Which is when he hears a voice behind him, and whirls around to see--no one.

"Well, well," the voice says, and Akira's gaze finally finds a TV hanging on the wall a little over head height. There's someone on it that looks like Teddie, but wearing some kind of military outfit, chomping on a cigar and wearing an expression of absolute, angry disdain. Akira mentally tries the idea of _Teddie going evil_ on for size, and discards it as being too ridiculous to possibly be true. That's just not what Teddie's like at all.

He doesn't know what the thing _is_ , if he's not Teddie (Shadow, maybe? Shapeshifter?), but basically any other explanation makes more sense than Teddie turning evil overnight. 

"What are you, then?" the fake Teddie asks, sneering down at Akira from the TV screen. "Some kind of lame cosplay enthusiast?"

Akira moves (cautiously) toward the TV, being careful in case there are any more invisible walls. None pop up, so he walks to just below the TV and stands looking up at it, debating how to answer. He very badly wants answers, and isn't sure what to say to get them. "I'm a Trickster," he says at last. "Who are you?"

"Trickster, eh?" says the fake Teddie. There's a sudden light in his eyes. "Think I've heard something about that."

"Yea?" Akira asks. "From who?" 

"Just around," says the fake Teddie. "And I didn't think that _you_ would end up in this little tournament."

Akira shrugs. He has no idea what the point of this tournament is, but since not being part of it it got him out of a stupid nickname on the Midnight Channel last night, that's probably not a bad thing. "So who are you?" he asks again. "And what's the point of all this?"

"You can call me... _General_ Teddie," the fake Teddie says.

Akira tries hard not to roll his eyes at the unnecessarily dramatic pause, but fails.

"What was that?" General Teddie demands.

"What was what?"

"That look on your face," General Teddie says. "I think you were making fun of me!"

Akira is just a little too slow thinking up a reply, which seems to piss General Teddie off even more. 

"In any case," says the bear. "You're not the only one here that's not supposed to be. I think it's about time for some of you last minute entrants to start participating."

"There's more people here?" Akira asks, eyes going wide. "More than just the Investigation Team?"

But the TV goes black, and Akira is left alone with more questions than answers. Who else is here that shouldn't be? And if General Teddie had called him a last minute entrant, does that mean he's supposed to fight someone?

He doesn't mind fighting Shadows. They're not like _people_. They don't think and feel and have lives of their own. Even the ones he talks to when he recruits them are... vague. Apart from Teddie, Shadows don't have their own unique personalities, and fighting them doesn't really feel like killing. It's... different.

Akira doesn't think he wants to fight an actual person.

He's thinking about this, half focused on whether he's going to be expected to actually fight another person, and half focused on getting through the maze of invisible walls, when he comes to a set of stairs and sees Naoto standing at the top.

He feels a rush of relief at the sight of a familiar face, only slightly dampened by confusion over seeing Naoto, who is not even supposed to _be_ in Inaba today. Who cares how she got here, what actually matters is that he's not alone anymore. "What are you doing here?" Akira calls up at her, grinning.

Instead of answering, Naoto asks, "What are _you_ doing here?" 

"I came with Yu and everyone," Akira says. 

"Of course you did," Naoto says, raising her eyes toward the ceiling in a dismissive, disdainful movement. "You know, even for a little kid like you, trailing around after the rest of us all the time is a little bit pathetic."

Akira's smile slips off his face, and he feels suddenly off balance. "What do you mean?" he asks.

"That you're pathetic," Naoto says, and to Akira's horror she pulls her gun. This isn't like Naoto at all--he's never heard her say anything like this, and he's never seen her pull a weapon on anyone other than a Shadow.

"Naoto--"

"And it's about time you left the rest of us alone," Naoto says.

She has a hand on her gun, and Akira doesn't know what's going on but he knows that he doesn't want to be shot, and that the things Naoto is saying make him think that she's not going to hesitate to actually hurt him. Akira reaches behind him, to where his knives are.

His fingers close around the handle of one of them, and that's when Naoto moves. Akira ducks and rolls out of the way from sheer instinct, and then the two of them are _fighting_. Actually fighting, in a way that Akira never has before. He's attacked Shadows in the TV World, and been beat up in the real world, but he's never... fought.

But he does now, because it feels like he has no other choice. He pulls out his knives because Naoto has a gun, and he attacks because she's attacking too. He pushes past his fear and confusion and hurt, and fights as hard as he possibly can. 

He's tall for his age, after a growth spurt last year, but light and gangly, more elbows and knees than anything else. Naoto, even though she's smaller than most of the rest of the Investigation Team, is still generally bigger than Akira is. She's also four years older, and has training from her work with the police. Akira, bluntly, does not have much of a chance.

Which is when she hits him across the face, and he feels his mask block the worst of the pain, and remembers.

They're inside the TV.

Akira winces as he takes a sharp elbow to the stomach, then stumbles back a few steps, reaches up, and pulls his mask away from his face. "Persona!" he shouts, and suddenly the fight is a _lot_ less one sided. Naoto's eyes go wide, and she stumbles back for a second in sheer surprise. It's a second that Akira jumps on, scrambling up from where he's fallen to the floor, and pushing forward with his Persona. It only takes Naoto another beat or two to realize that what he can do, so can she--and then it's not a case of fists and guns and knives, but Persona against Persona.

And Akira's not sure--he's _really_ not--which one of them would have won if not for that moment where Naoto was completely off balance with surprise. But as it is, she never quite manages to recover, and she drops first.

Akira lets out a noise that's not even words, and drops to his knees, panting hard. He hates this, he _really_ hates this, and is overwhelmed by a shaking, trembling feeling of mingled adrenaline and fear and relief. Slowly, Akira presses his gloved hands together, and watches them until they finally stop trembling.

"Akira."

He jerks his head up at the sound of Naoto's voice, bracing for more of... he doesn't know what he's more afraid of. Another fight? Or more of that casual cruelty she'd shown beforehand?

"Are you okay?" he blurts, looking up at her. Then he winces, at how stupid it sounds for _him_ to be asking _her_ that, after the fight they've just had. If she's not okay, then it's his fault.

But the question actually does seem to relax her a little, and she offers him a surprisingly confident nod. "I... will be," she assures him. "You seem to have--come back to yourself."

"What?" Akira asks.

"Those things you were saying," Naoto says.

"What about what _you_ were saying?" Akira demands. "All that stuff about--"

He bites his tongue and flushes, looking away.

"Interesting," Naoto says. Her voice is thoughtful, and behind fresh bruises, her eyes brighten. "Tell me what you heard me say."

It's a weird question to ask, Akira thinks, but between the two of them she'd definitely come out the worse from that fight, and Akira definitely feels bad about that, and so he repeats the whole conversation as faithfully as he can. Naoto listens in silence. Then when he's done, she says, "I believe that something about this place twists what we're saying. I did _not_ say any of what you think you heard."

Akira's mouth opens a little, surprised and horrified that this is even a thing that can happen. This place has already split everyone up, and now it's stopping them from being able to even trust what they hear and see from each other.

Naoto continues, frowning. "And I assume that _you_ didn't say what _I_ heard, either," she says.

"What did you hear me say?" Akira asks.

Naoto opens her mouth and... hesitates. Then she shakes her head. "Never mind," she tells him firmly. It wasn't real, and it doesn't matter."

But Akira remembers that she had reached for her weapon first, and without knowing specifically what she'd heard, he can imagine that it had been bad. 

His gaze slides away from her face, and he finds himself feeling grateful for the mask on his own as he feels a sudden shame for whatever she'd heard him say. The fact that he hadn't actually said any of it doesn't seem to matter as much as the fact that Naoto had _heard_ it and _believed_ it, if only for a little while.

Then again, he hadn't known what to think of what she was saying, either. They'd both heard something awful, and felt like they had to fight. "This is some kind of tournament," he says. "Right? A fighting tournament. Maybe this is how they make sure there's actual... you know. Fighting."

Her expression goes tense, which Akira doesn't think means she _disagrees_ with him, just that she doesn't like the idea. "I think you might be right," she says. "But we need more data before we can say that's definitely what's happening. Come o--"

But before she can take more than two or three steps away from the stairs where the two of them had fought, she slams into one of the invisible walls.

"I hate those things," Akira says, and hurries over to help try and find a way through. Only, when he gets to the wall that had stopped Naoto cold, his hand passes right through it.

"Maybe it went away?" Akira asks, taking a few cautious steps forward. Still, no invisible wall pops up to stop him. 

"No," Naoto says, pressing her hand flat up against a wall that Akira can neither see nor feel. "It's not letting me pass."

They stare at each other from either side of the invisible wall. Akira's not sure how long they would have stood there trying to figure it out, if they hadn't been interrupted by General Teddie.

"Well?" 

His voice comes out of nowhere, and Akira jumps and looks around, finally spotting another TV mounted on the wall, projecting General Teddie's leering face.

"Well, what?" Akira asks. He's a little quicker on the uptake than Naoto (who looks like she's still in the middle of doing a double take at seeing Teddie's doppelganger). 

"Well," he says, with an exaggerated patience. "Why don't you move on already? You won, now you have another match waiting for you."

Akira squirms and tries hard not to _look_ like he's squirming. He doesn't feel _proud_ , for winning this fight. He feels like, if he'd been a little bit smarter or better, he would have been able to see through whatever fake insults and accusations he'd heard coming from Naoto. "What about Naoto?" he demands. 

"What _about_ her?" asks General Teddie.

"Why is she stuck?"

"Because," he says, in a tone that's clearly _enjoying_ this being the bearer of bad news. " _She_ didn't win! You win, you move on. You lose... you _don't_."

"But that's not--"

Akira stops, angry but already knowing _that's not fair_ isn't going to do anything but give General Teddie something to laugh at. 

"Akira," Naoto says, into the brief moment of silence that follows his cut off outburst. 

He turns around to look at her--behind him, he hears another laugh from General Teddie, and then the static-y sound of the TV turning off.

"We can't do anything about the fact that what the rules of this place are," Naoto says. Her tone is as absolutely matter of fact as ever. "So right now, that means that you're going on and I'm staying here."

"But--"

"We don't know who set this up," Naoto continues. "Or why, or how. It isn't going to do us any good at all if both of us are sitting here." She looks frustrated. "I _can't_ leave, so you need to meet up with anyone else that hasn't--"

A pause. 

"Hasn't already lost a fight?" Akira suggests.

Naoto nods. "I don't like any of this," she says. "Be careful."

Akira doesn't like it either. He knows trouble, knows it intimately after its spent the previous year chasing after him, and this smells like the worst kind. This isn't just... messing around, and they're going to get more than a lecture or a grounding if things go wrong.

They're going to get hurt.

They're going to be hurt _by each other_.

"I'll be careful," he promises.

"Good," Naoto says, and then suddenly she tenses. "I forgot," she says. "We're not the only ones here. There are other Persona users."

"You mean, the rest of the Investigation Team?" he asks. From the urgency in her voice, Akira thinks he already knows the answer. 

Sure enough, Naoto shakes her head. "No," she says. "I mean there are _other_ Persona users here. I--it's a long story and there's no time now. But during the mission I was on before coming here, I was tasked with tracking another group of Persona users. They call themselves the Shadow Operatives, and I came here after following them into a TV here."

There are more Persona users here? _There are more Persona users_?

Akira's mind races through the consequences of this, fidgeting as the first flash of surprise gives way to what it means for right now, during this tournament. It's bad enough that people he trusts are somewhere in this messed up school, but now there are other people too, who could be... anything, really. If Akira runs into one of these strangers, he doesn't know how far they'd be willing to go in a fight.

"I'll be careful," he promises Naoto again.

It's all he can do.

-//-

Since entering the strange world of the P-1 tournament, Yu has been separated from his friends and Akira, tricked into fighting Yosuke, and herded down a series of hallways that are much too long and byzantine to actually exist in normal space.

He knows that they're _not_ in normal space, of course. They're in some... weird corner of the TV World, and it doesn't need to comply with the normal laws of architecture if it doesn't want to. 

It's just that there's something about this place looking so much like Yasogami--so much like a place he'd spent time in, in the real world. It tricks the brain, somehow. The things that don't belong feel somehow even _more_ wrong, juxtaposed against the parts that seem normal. That, and the fact that he'd just fought one of his friends--the shame of being tricked into it, and the guilt of seeing Yosuke hurt and knowing that it's his fault--have Yu more than usual on high alert.

Which is why it throws him so badly when he hurtles around a corner and suddenly, unexpectedly, into the Velvet Room.

He falls back into the familiar blue seat with a _whump_ , and looks across the open space to where Margaret sits alone on the opposite seat. There's no sign of Igor, unusually enough. Just Margaret, sitting alone, looking at him with an expression of patience, mingled with her usual vague disapproval.

She doesn't say anything until a little of Yu's pent-up panic has started to fade. He's been running and fighting since falling into the TV, and it takes some time for his adrenaline to accept the fact that this is somewhere new.

"Is it safe here?" he asks Margaret.

"It is," she tells him. 

"Why--"

"Because," Margaret says. "You have been dragged into a new and dangerous situation. And because I believe..." She trails off here, looking expectantly into the empty space beside her. Yu's about to ask what she's looking at, when suddenly there is a flash of blue next to Margaret and something solid slams into Yu. 

He braces himself instinctively as Akira--the something solid--rolls off him with a wince.

"I believe I was not the only one to think of this as a safe place," Margaret says, with a barely hidden smile. 

So now there are the four of them in the limo--Yu and Akira on the one side, and Margaret and Lavenza on the other. Yu's attention goes immediately to Akira, who is looking around with an expression of gradually fading confusion. He looks about as battered and bruised as Yu feels, which means that he must have also run smack up into the reality of the fighting tournament they've all been dragged into.

(and also, possibly, he's run smack into a few of those invisible walls. Yu knows he definitely has some bruises from those)

"Akira," Yu says, turning as much as he can in the space they have, ignoring the two Velvet Room attendants in favor of making sure Akira's alright. "Are you okay?"

"Um," Akira says. "Mostly fine? Pretty confused. Why are we here? I thought I wasn't allowed."

Both of them look over at Margaret and Lavenza.

"I decided to risk bringing you here, and simply hope no one would object," Lavenza says. There’s a slightly challenging note in her voice as she glances sideways at Margaret, and despite the circumstances, Yu smiles. He recognizes a little bit of Akira's _yes I know that I'm about to get in trouble for what I'm doing, and yes I'm going to keep doing it anyway_ in her tone. It's possible that he has somehow managed to be a bad influence on her.

"Under these unusual circumstances," Margaret says (and if Lavenza's tone is Trouble, hers is _someone has to be the responsible adult here_ ). "I suppose this is necessary."

Lavenza grins, and Margaret gives an only slightly self-conscious nod, and Yu catches himself thinking how much more... human, the residents of the Velvet Room seem when Igor's not around. The two of them might almost have passed for sisters or close friends.

But he shoves the thought aside, because there are so many more urgent things to be worrying about right now, and if he's getting a chance to talk to Akira without the strange distortions he's seen during the P-1 Tournament, Yu is absolutely going to take it.

"Were you fighting someone too?" Akira asks, while Yu is still trying to decide where to start. He's eyeing Yu's fresh bruises warily.

"I was," Yu admits. "I--" This _stupid_ tournament. "I... won my match with Yosuke."

"And did you... when you were fighting, did you hear...?"

Yu winces. Yes, he had heard Yosuke saying things that were out of character and _wrong_ , and he'd been stupid enough in the moment to let that taunt him into a fight with his friend. "I heard him saying things he never actually said," Yu tells him. "And he heard the same thing from me. We just... don't know why yet."

"Naoto thinks it's because whoever's running the tournament wants us all to fight," Akira says. "Which--I guess it makes sense, right? They're not going to go to all that trouble to drag us here and set up the tournament and then just let us _not_ fight."

"Naoto?" Yu repeats. "But she didn't come through with us. Are you sure--"

"Oh!" Akira says. "I forgot--" And then he tells Yu what he's apparently heard from Naoto, about the Persona-users that she'd followed into the TV World. "So I guess there's some other people around here, somewhere," he finishes. "I haven't seen any of them yet, but--I don't know. They must be around."

Yu thinks back to what he's seen so far--there actually _had_ been someone he saw that didn't seem to belong, but she'd been wearing a Yasogami High uniform, and she'd seemed genuinely confused when he asked her about Persona. He tells Akira about her anyway.

"I saw a girl a few minutes before Margaret brought me here," he says. "I didn't catch her name, but I guess she's the student council president this year. She ran off before I could ask more questions, but I don't _think_ she sounds like she'd be part of the group Naoto followed here."

"The student council president is a guy this year," Akira informs him. 

"What?" Yu is several months behind on Inaba and Yasogami gossip, so of course he doesn't actually know who the student council president is--but Akira is in middle school, so how would he know either?

"His younger brother's in my class," Akira says. "I remember he was bragging about it for _ages_."

"Maybe you heard wrong," Yu suggests. Because it honestly makes no sense for that girl to be running around pretending to be president for no reason, and more probably Akira had just misheard a piece of gossip.

"I don't think so," Akira says, doubtfully.

Yu shakes his head. "Either way," he says. "Whoever she is, she doesn't have a Persona and she's stuck here just like the rest of us."

Akira nods. "Got it," he says. "And I'll tell anyone else I see. I mean..." he fidgets. "Assuming we can talk to each other normally. And we don't just have to fight."

Yu has been trying hard not to think about the fact that this is a tournament, and that it inevitably means that they are all going to be asked to keep fighting until they lose. Or until... what? What happens at the end, when there's only one of them left standing?

He knows why _he's_ fighting, at least. Why he'd felt desperate enough to take what Yosuke was saying at face value, and fight to get past him. He wonders if he should tell Akira--it'll make him worry, obviously, but maybe it's not fair to keep this secret.

"You know," he says reluctantly. "Ah--the Teddie we've been seeing on the TV screens here?"

"General Teddie?" Akira asks, nose wrinkling.

"Right," Yu says. "He told me something when we first got here."

There's a pause.

"What was it?" Akira prompts.

"Nanako might be here," Yu says. "He said she was, anyway--kind of implied that if I wanted to get to her, the only way to do it would be to actually win the tournament."

Akira's expression is suddenly very difficult to read. Masklike, without wearing a mask. "How would she be here?" he asks. 

Yu's thought about this plenty, ever since General Teddie had dangled that out ahead of him. It _doesn't_ make a lot of sense for Nanako to be here. She might have been kidnapped by whoever set up this tournament. But that's happened before, and she'll know to be careful now, won't she? She'll know not to go near TVs with strangers. And anyway, if she was here, wouldn't General Teddie have shown her to Yu? As proof? What if this is just a lie to manipulate him?

_But what if it's not?_

"I don't know," he says, in answer to Akira's question. "But if she's here, someone has to get to her."

Nanako is seven, and doesn't have a Persona. There's no way that being stuck in the middle of a dangerous fighting tournament is going to be good to her.

Akira nods, and sighs, and Yu feels guilty for a second as Akira's mask melts away into worry. Then he pushes it away. Akira is young too, but not... not in the same way as Nanako. There are times when he _does_ need to be protected, sure, and Yu wants to be there for him whenever those times come. But here? With an unknown threat bearing down on them, a situation no one fully understands, and a fight that's already leaving them black and blue?

Yu is pretty sure that not only can Akira handle this, he'd actually be offended if Yu tried to keep him out of it.

"It's about time for both of you to be getting back," Margaret says. 

Yu had almost forgotten she and Lavenza are there. "Thank you for letting us both be here," he says. He thinks that they needed this chance to talk.

Margaret nods. "It seemed like the best way to help," she says. "But now..." She starts to wave a hand, as if in dismissal, but Akira interrupts.

"Wait!" he says. "Wait, I--there's one more thing. Really quick."

He turns to Yu with an expression of urgency on his face behind his glasses. "If we have to fight each other," he says--and then stops.

Yu winces. He has been trying to avoid thinking about what it will be like to fight _any_ of his friends, but Akira is, in a lot of ways, like a brother to him. He opens his mouth to try to say... something. He doesn't know what. In the end, Akira's the one who manages to find the words first. 

"If we have to fight, one of us has to be able to keep going," Akira says. "And the only way on is for one of us to win. We can't just--choose not to fight. Right? Because finding Nanako if she's here is important. And getting to General Teddie, wherever he is, and figuring out why he's here. If we meet up, we... have to fight."

Yu doesn't want to. But he doesn't want to be involved with any of this at all, and it seems like the chance to back off is already gone, if it ever existed at all. "Okay," he says quietly.

Akira kind of half smiles, and looks away from Yu as he says, "Guess you're probably going to have to fight the Trickster after all."

Yu gives a little involuntary snort of laughter at that. Sure, there was a time when he'd assumed that a fight with the Trickster was inevitable. Before he'd known that said Trickster was _Akira_ , he'd thought vaguely that he was going to have to do something about him, one way or another.

He isn't looking forward to it now. Selfishly, he hopes that their paths won't cross again once they're both out of the Velvet Room. But what can they do about it?

"Akira," he says. "Listen. _If_ we have to fight, I'm not going to let you get hurt. And whatever you hear me saying--I don't mean it."

"I know," Akira says. Then he grins. "And anyway, maybe _I'm_ going to be the one that's going to need to make sure _you_ don't get hurt. Maybe if we fought, I'd win."

Yu doesn't think that's very likely. He's older and stronger than Akira, and he has absolutely no doubt whatsoever that Izanagi is stronger than Arsene. But Akira's grinning up at him with a kind of challenge, and Yu chooses not to say any of that out loud. "We'll see," he says, and reaches over to put an arm around Akira's shoulder's just for a second, before he and Lavenza are just--gone.

And a second later so is Yu, back to the school, ready to see who his next fight is going to be with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I don't know how well this is going to turn out, but I guess we'll find out!
> 
> (Also I'm kind of sad this can't just be five chapters of Akira and Yu hanging out in Inaba, because I enjoyed that scene way too much)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer/Reminder: I have not played P3, so while I have done my best to keep the P3 cameos as in character as possible, I'm 100% sure that fans of that game will not be happy with me. I'm sorry!

Akira stumbles a little at the transition from the Velvet Room back to the school, and a hand reaches out to steady him. When he looks up, Lavenza's at his side, looking concerned and sympathetic.

"Thanks," he says, as he straightens and she pulls away. "Are you allowed to stick around for this?" She hadn't been allowed to help much, at the end of last year when the fog came down over Inaba. He's not sure what's going on here, but the whole situation feels definitely different. He's kind of crossing his fingers that it's different _enough_ that Lavenza will be allowed to stay, at least for a while.

"I don't know," Lavenza says thoughtfully. "I think this would count as a gray area."

She smiles.

Akira smiles back. He's sore all over from his fight with Naoto, and on top of that he's scared (despite his cockiness to Yu in the Velvet Room) of whoever he's going to have to fight next. He's suddenly terrified that Nanako's here somewhere, defenseless and in danger.

But he's missed Lavenza. And he's glad she's here, even if it is in the worst possible circumstances.

"Have you ever seen anything like this?" he asks her as they walk--carefully--through the hallways. Lavenza doesn't seem to be affected by the invisible walls that keep getting in Akira's way, but all that means is that she's not any help in finding them before Akira smacks into them. She _is_ able to help him through the invisible walls once or twice, but this turns out to be so incredibly uncomfortable for Akira that they stop trying.

"I haven't," Lavenza tells him. "Not exactly like this. But there have always been dangerous things in the world, and Persona have always been the best way to fight back."

Now that they're out of the Velvet Room, he's back in his normal TV World clothes--he puts a hand up against his mask now, and feeling Arsene thrumming against his mind, ready to be released. "Do you think," he says slowly. "That things like this will keep happening? New emergencies, things like this?"

"It's possible," Lavenza says.

"Good," says Akira.

She looks at him and raises an eyebrow.

"I mean--obviously I don't want horrible bad things to keep happening, but..." Akira shrugs. "I don't know. I like... doing this. I like my Persona."

She gives him a look that says (very clearly) that she understands. "You might not want to keep fighting Shadows forever," she tells him. "Someday you might decide that you're ready to stop."

"I don't think so," Akira says doubtfully.

Then he runs straight into an invisible wall, and that pretty much ends the conversation.

"I think I broke my nose," Akira announces, holding both hands over it.

"Let me see?" Lavenza says. She's standing on the other side of the invisible wall--which she, of course, had passed through easily--and leans forward as Akira reluctantly lowers his hands. Lavenza studies his face for a few moments, then shakes her head. "No," she declares. "Not broken."

"Are you sure?"

"...no."

Akira laughs, then scrunches his face up and considers the pain--probably not actually broken, he admits to himself. He opens his mouth to say as much, and to suggest that they maybe try a different direction with no invisible walls... and then he stops.

"Who's that?" he asks.

There's someone standing at the end of the hallway, wearing the same shade of blue as Lavenza and Margaret. Akira's never seen this woman before, though.

Lavenza turns around, and then starts. Her entire body tenses for a second before she seems to force herself to relax.

Her eyes, when she half turns in Akira's direction, are not relaxed. They are excited and worried and confused. When she doesn't answer immediately, Akira thinks that maybe this is another situation where she's not allowed to explain.

Then she says, slowly, "Her name is Elizabeth. She used to serve in the Velvet Room, as Margaret and I do."

"She used to?" Akira repeats.

"She... chose to leave," Lavenza says slowly.

"Why?"

His friend is quiet for a little while. Then finally, she says, "For reasons I did not understand at the time."

This does not clarify anything at all.

"I think I do now, though," Lavenza continues, so quietly that Akira almost doesn't hear her. "I think there are circumstances that would make her leaving acceptable, and the reason she gave is one of them."

"What was it?" Akira asks.

But Lavenza only shakes her head. "Never mind," she says quietly. "I... want to speak with her. It's been a while since she left the Velvet Room."

"Do you want me to come with you?" Akira asks. "Or, uh... do you want to be alone?" Talking to Elizabeth isn't going to help them get through this tournament any faster, but if he's being honest, he's curious.

"I..." Lavenza says, and then the choice is taken away from her as Elizabeth's gaze lands on the two of them.

"Sister!" she calls, her voice full of a genuine excitement. "I was not expecting to see _you_ in a place like this!"

"And what about you?" Lavenza asks. "What are you doing here?"

"I sensed a great gathering," Elizabeth says. "Of _many_ Persona users! And I thought to myself, _my_ doesn't this seem interesting?" Her eyes move from Lavenza to Akira, who suddenly feels like an ant under a microscope under her unflinching gaze. "Is this your guest, little sister?" she asks Lavenza, without looking away from Akira.

"Not yet, technically," Lavenza says. "But he _is_ a friend."

There's a sudden sharpening of the interest on Elizabeth's face, and she looks at Akira (who finds he's suddenly fighting the urge to step backward from the sheer intensity) when she says, "What an _interesting_ bond there must be between the two of you."

"He's something special," Lavenza says, matter of fact and sure. Akira flushes.

"How fascinating!" says Elizabeth, and then suddenly she strikes a pose that looks a little bit like a battle stance. "I would like to see the power of this bond for myself."

"You want to fight?" Akira asks.

"This is a place where combatants gather to test their strength against each other," Elizabeth says. "Is it not?"

"It's a fighting tournament," Akira says slowly. "But..." this doesn't feel like it would be an official fight. Just like Lavenza has been walking around with him without actually being made an official competitor of the tournament. Akira doesn't want to do any more fighting than he absolutely has to. He's only been in one fight so far, and he's already _hurt_. He knows how powerful Lavenza is, and he doesn't think for a second that he has a chance against a sister of hers.

"Then what better chance to pit forces against one another?" Elizabeth says, her eyes lighting up in apparently genuine excitement. "What better time to--why are you doing that?"

Akira looks over at Lavenza, who has her face buried in her hands. "Why are you _always_ like this?" she moans.

"I have no idea what you mean," Elizabeth says, and Akira honestly can't tell whether she's being serious or not. Then her bright gaze turns to focus on him. "You would like to fight me, would you not?"

"Uh--"

Lavenza puts a hand on Akira's arm, just for a second, a touch as light as a butterfly's wings brushing against his elbow. "If it's our bond that you'd like to see," she tells Elizabeth. "Then let me be the one to show you."

"You'll be okay?" Akira asks her.

"Of course," Lavenza assures him. "Continue through the tournament, Trickster. I'm sure I'll be able to catch up to you later."

Akira hesitates for a second, but getting through the tournament is important, and staying near _this_ fight is almost definitely going to be dangerous. He turns, and runs.

(Straight into an invisible wall, sure, but on his second try he manages a slightly less awkward exit)

The sounds of intense battle follow him down the hall and around the corner, and Akira finds himself wondering what exactly the Velvet Room attendants _are_. 

-//-

Akira's next fight comes when he goes around a corner and almost runs smack into a woman he's never seen before. He tries to stop in time, stumbles, trips, and falls flat on his face onto the floor because apparently this is just really not his day.

He considers how to react to this, mind racing, and eventually decides on a heartfelt, _"Ow."_

It's not like he's all that hurt, honestly. The fall had been more embarrassing than painful, but he thinks there's an advantage to seeming like he's in worse shape than he is. The brief look he'd gotten of the person he'd run into had been of a woman dressed in tight black with a white fur coat over the whole thing, with an expression that says she's ready to fight, and holding a rapier in a way that suggests she knows how to use it. In the face of that, being underestimated might be the only advantage Akira gets here.

"Who are you, then?" the woman says, and Akira takes his time sitting up and taking in both the lady and their surroundings before he answers. They're in a wide hallway, much more open than what a real school would ever need, and clear of furniture or obstacles that might get in the way of a match. As for the woman herself, Akira definitely doesn't recognize her, which means that she's probably one of the people Naoto had told him about. He wishes that he'd taken the time then to ask how well these other people might be able to fight, but it's too late now.

Akira opens his mouth to ask about the outfit, remembers what _he's_ wearing, and closes it again. "My name's Akira," he says, standing slowly. "Are you part of the P-1 tournament too?"

"It seems that I am," she says. "I don't remember seeing you on that... video."

"I have a bad habit of showing up in places I'm not supposed to be," Akira says. "Who are you?"

"My name is Mitsuru Kirijo," she says. Then, after a second or two, she says, "We don't seem to be having any trouble understanding each other. In my previous... matches, I've heard my colleagues say--terrible things."

"Me too," Akira says, dropping his eyes to the floor as he remembers. 

A second later, he remembers that there's a pretty large chance that this is someone he's supposed to fight, and snaps his gaze back up to watch her as she watches him. Her gaze on him is shrewd and watchful, and Akira doesn't think she's buying his injured act all that much. Oh well--it had been worth a try.

"Maybe because we don't know each other," Akira says slowly. "I wouldn't know if the things you were saying were out of character or not anyway. And it's not as... hard, to fight a stranger as it is to fight a friend."

Mitsuru continues to watch him across the open space between the two of them. "You're really fighting, then?" she asks. "You can't be more than--ten? Eleven?"

" _Twelve_ ," Akira says. "And I'll be thirteen in two months, and I didn't ask to be in this tournament, but now that I am, I'm not just going to give up."

"You can fight, then?" Mitsuru asks.

Akira nods. "I have a Persona," he says. "And I have a reason to fight." He doesn't know Mitsuru, he doesn't know what she's fighting for or even why he's here. If he loses this fight, right now, he doesn't know what'll happen. No one on the Investigation Team would fight him to the actual death. Will she? Even if she doesn't, if she wins, and Akira's left behind within the invisible walls, he might never find out what's going on. And, what if General Teddie had been telling Yu the truth when he said that Nanako is here?

"I'm not going to fight you," Mitsuru says. She sounds so dismissive as she says it that Akira bristles instinctively.

"I'm not going to stop here," he says. "You've already fought the people you came in with, right?" She said she'd heard them say awful things, so they must have fought, and she must have won. "So you know how this works. If we don't fight, neither of us moves on."

"I don't like it," Mitsuru tells him shortly, as if this is supposed to be the end of the discussion. But there's something on her face now, like she's thinking about it. Cool. Because Akira hates this whole idea and _does not want to fight_ , but he's not going to just.... stop. Not without even trying.

"I don't think that literally _anyone_ here likes it," Akira tells her, and then pauses, watching as she seems to tense, maybe finally starting to be convinced that a fight between them is actually going to happen. Akira takes this in, realizes that they're probably only seconds away from the match starting, and thinks--she's bigger and older and looks like she's fought before. Can I do _anything_ to get an advantage here?

He does the only thing he can think of, and keeps talking. Say something, say anything, and hope she's focused on that, and not on his hand as he reaches back for a dagger. "Well--maybe Kanji might be having fun, if he ended up getting in after all. He's not a bad guy, like I think a lot of people think he is, but I bet he'd actually be having a blast with all this."

She blinks. "If we're going to fight, you should at least take this seriousl--"

 _"Arsene!"_ Akira shouts, and in the moment where she's still trying to finish her sentence he _flies_ across the space between them. Arsene hovers in the air above him, daggers outstretched for an attack in the same moment that Arsene lets loose with one of his own.

He's hoping to catch her off guard the way he had Naoto, but Mitsuru is ready, and doesn't give him the opening he'd been hoping for. _"Artemisia!"_ Mitsuru calls, and there's a crash as her Persona slides in front of his, blocking the attack and pushing back.

Akira takes a deep breath, dodges an attack from Mitsuru and a second one from her Persona, and comes up again behind her with his dagger out. He gets a hit in, but then she does too, and the fight goes on.

And Mitsuru is winning. Akira's not down yet, but he can tell which way the fight is going. He grits his teeth, because _he_ _is not ready to give up,_ and feels his mind race.

And in the back of his mind, he feels... something. A stirring of an idea. A _stupid_ idea, but since he doesn't have any good ones, it has to be worth a try.

" _Persona!"_ he calls, and tears off his mask. He can see Mitsuru raising her gun thing again, ready to fight Arsene with her own Persona again--

Only, Akira has more than one Persona, and it's not Arsene that comes. It's Belphegor, which is a Persona Akira doesn't use too much due to how _Belphegor is a giant purple guy sitting on a toilet_ , but right now that's kind of the whole point. It's not dignified, and it's not cool, but Akira is banking on the fact that not even the most dignified fighter in the world could _not_ be thrown off when a toilet demon is coming at them.

And it works, because Belphegor's attack hits just in the second when Mitsuru is frozen with surprise, and by the time she recovers Akira is already on her with a follow up attack, and he puts absolutely everything that he has into it.

Mitsuru goes down.

Akira wins.

" _Ahhhh_ ," he says, panting and half collapsing onto the floor. For a second or two they both stay there where they are, so worn out and collapsed that it would be impossible to tell which of them is the winner and which is the loser.

Akira is still crouched there on the floor when he looks up, and sees Yu.

-//-

Yu hears the sounds of fighting long before he sees the match, and he braces for whatever he's about to see, every muscle tensing up in dread expectation. Who's it going to be, he wonders. Two of his friends? Or someone new? Would it be better or worse if it's someone he's never seen before? At least if it's members of the Investigation Team, he knows that he doesn't have to worry about anyone going too far and actually _hurting_ each other. No matter what they think they're seeing and hearing, no one is going to do anything...

_Permanent._

(Although--how many members of the Investigation Team are left? He's just come from fighting Yukiko, who had mentioned fighting Chie first, and his own first match had been against Yosuke. Akira had won his match against Naoto, which leaves... _maybe_ Kanji or Teddie, if they'd gotten in)

He's not sure about anyone else that might have gotten sucked up into this. According to Naoto, the others that have stumbled into the tournament have Personas as well, but that doesn't tell Yu anything at all about how dangerous they might be.

Maybe he's about to find out, when he gets to the source of the fighting he can still hear ahead of him. Yu strains his ears, trying to hear anything he possibly can. The sounds of fighting are too discordant to make out any details from that alone, and the odd grunts or groans aren't enough to identify the fighters. But he's hoping that he'll at least be able to hear someone calling their Persona, and maybe get an idea of who's fighting from that.

When he hears _Arsene_ , he speeds up.

When he hears _Artemisia,_ which is the name of a Persona belonging to no one he knows, he speeds up even more.

(When he hears _Belphegor_ he pauses for a second in confusion)

And then he goes around a corner and is met with the sight of two people on the floor, and for a second he's not sure which of them is the winner. He catches himself thinking this and feels, immediately, _shame_. Why does it matter who won and who lost? That's still Akira on the floor, and everything in Yu flares up in sudden protectiveness.

Akira spots him then, and Yu can tell when it happens because his eyes light up behind his mask and he forces himself up onto his feet. 

"You okay?" Yu asks, and is relieved when Akira is able to leave the unfamiliar woman (who by this point has managed to sit up as well, and is watching the two of them) and join him. This hallway is much larger than it should be, and the makeshift arena where Akira and the stranger had been fighting--marked out by the burns and scuffs on the walls and floor--barely takes up half of it.

"Pretty much okay," Akira says. "I think. Maybe. Ow."

"Looks like you won?" Yu says.

"Barely," Akira says with a little wince. "I hit her with a toilet."

RIght, Belphegor. Well that's... certainly a strategy.

"Okay," Yu says, deciding that it's best to just move on quickly from that. "That's... good, I think?" Akira shrugs, and slides down the wall on the other side of the hall until he's sitting with his legs stretched out in front of him, looking tired and generally beat up. Yu squats down in front of him. "Do you know who she is?" he asks, keeping his voice low.

"No," Akira says, matching Yu's quiet tone. "Kind of, I guess? She says her name's Mitsuru Kirijo. I don't know anything else really, except that I'm guessing she's part of that group Naoto was talking about."

Yu nods, and stands again. "I'm going to talk to her," he says. "When you've rested a little, we can go on together."

"Okay," Akira says, and doesn't make any move to get up as Yu heads back over to Mitsuru. She stands as he gets close, and seems to be considering him. Yu tries not to feel like he's being weighed up and found wanting. 

"I recognize you," she says. "You were in that video. The sister complex--"

"I did _not_ choose that name," Yu says quickly. From behind him, he hears Akira stifling a snort of laughter. 

"Fair enough," says Mitsuru. "What's your real name, then?"

"Yu Narukami," Yu says. "And Akira says your name is Mitsuru Kirijo?"

"Yes," she says. "And--" She stops suddenly, eyes narrowing, and Yu instinctively turns to see what she's looking at.

There's a TV screen on the wall.

"Well isn't this convenient," says General Teddie. "I was just thinking that with all these extra contestants, I'd need to start hurrying some of the matches along! And here we have two contestants already in the same place."

For a second, Yu assumes he's talking about himself and Mitsuru.

Then he remembers that Akira had just won his match, and Mitsuru has been eliminated.

" _No_ ," he says immediately, to the bear on the TV screen. Sure, he and Akira had talked about fighting each other earlier. But that had been in the safety of the Velvet Room, when a matchup between the two of them had still seemed like a statistically unlikely possibility. Now they're actually here facing each other, with Akira still recovering from the fight he's _just_ finished, and Yu... he's not going to fight him. He's just not.

"Then I guess you'll never get any farther in this tournament," General Teddie says, eyes glittering with a kind of angry malice. "And you'll never find out what happened to your precious Nanako, will you?"

It's _not_ fair to ask him to choose between Nanako and Akira, and Yu feels his hands balling up into fists at his sides. They're both like siblings to him. It's his job to worry about keeping both of them safe.

"Your choice!" General Teddie says, and then there's a click as the TV screen goes black again.

Yu turns, a sudden feeling of foreboding curling around him. He doesn't know exactly what's going to happen here, but he can imagine. There's no way, under normal circumstances, that he and Akira would fight. But this place, they already know, has the ability to twist and distort what they hear from each other. Yu has a feeling, now, that he's about to hear something very unpleasant from Akira.

Sure enough, when he turns he sees that Akira has gotten to his feet, and that his expression is one of almost shifty malevolence, which Akira has never seen from him before. "This doesn't have to happen," he says, just on the off chance that there's some way his words are going to get through.

"I think you _want_ it to, though," Akira says. "Don't you?"

It's all a lie, but Yu can't stop himself from answering anyway. " _No,_ " he says forcefully. 

"You have from the day you first heard about the Trickster," Akira says. 

"Things were different then," Yu says. 

"Because you didn't know I was me," Akira says. "But _I_ knew about _you_ for a long time before you figured me out. And I used to listen, you know. All the time. And I used to hear all the things you were saying about _me_. About how _I_ was evil and how _bad_ it would be if we ever met in the TV World."

Yu stares at him, not sure what to make of this. He _knows_ that these aren't things that Akira would ever actually say to him, but what if they're things he's thinking? There had, after all, been a stretch of several months between when Akira figured out that Yu was going into the TV World, and when Yu eventually learned that the kid he shared a room with was the Trickster. He hadn't exactly been as careful as he could have been, back then, about what he said to his friends about the TV World while Akira was around. He hadn't thought that it would mean anything.

He's sure that he _had_ said things back then about the Trickster. Things that he would never have said if he'd known the full story at the time. He knows that Akira had been scared to tell them the truth.

But he'd thought--assumed--that none of that bothered Akira anymore.

It doesn't, he tries to tell himself. None of this is real.

But it sounds true _enough_ that he doubts himself. "We don't have to fight," he says, and then adds in a lower voice, "And definitely not over _that_."

Akira scoffs, a noise that is somehow angry and disdainful and hurt all at the same time. "You thought I was your enemy all that time," he says. "So maybe it's time I started to act like it!"

Something in Yu snaps. "I don't want to do this," he says. "I _really_ don't. But even if none of it's real, I'm not going to stand here and let you talk like that." He pulls his sword, and is completely unsurprised when Akira's knife is in his hand at once. "We both know the real reasons we have to do this. One of us has to move on, we _can't_ stay here and let General Teddie win."

" _Persona!_ " Akira shouts, and the fight begins.

Yu has fought two of his friends by this point, first Yosuke and then Yukiko. It hadn't been fun with either of them, obviously, but there is something worse about fighting Akira. It's the fact that Yu feels more responsible for keeping Akira safe than he does any of his friends. It's the fact that Akira is _twelve_ and has only just finished another fight with someone else, and--

Well, honestly it's also because Akira is doing better than Yu had expected.

He's fought with Akira before, in the TV World. After they finally both started being honest with each other, Akira had joined with the rest of the Investigation Team to rescue Nanako, and then to go after Adachi. And Yu knows for a fact that Akira's Persona are no as powerful as his are. Common sense says that Akira should, therefore, be easier to beat in a fair fight.

He's not.

Both fights that Yu has been in so far have been fueled by fear and by a kind of vague reluctance that's hard to put a name to. They're all afraid, to be fighting each other, and even if this place is doing a very good job of making them think that they _have_ to, they're all aware that what they're doing is awful and wrong, and that comes through in every move.

Akira fights differently. He fights like he's trying as hard as he can to win, and Yu remembers what he'd said when they were in the Velvet Room. _Maybe,_ he'd said. _If we fought, I'd win._

And after Yu realizes that, he decides that there's nothing he can do but put his all into the fight. It feels--wrong, still, to be fighting like this. But at the same time it also feels _honest_. 

There had been a time, once, when Yu thought that he was going to have to fight the Trickster. He'd thought that this unknown menace would eventually get to a point where the only option he had was a face to face confrontation. This feels, in some small way, like finally letting go of that old and stupid fear.

So Yu fights too, and when he finally wins, when he's left standing upright over an Akira that's been driven to his knees, panting and bruised but grinning behind his mask like the madman he sometimes is, it feels like the first really honest fight of this whole tournament.

"I _almost_ won," Akira says, and then falls over with all due theatrics so he's lying on his back.

Yu's shaking hands steady as he hears something that actually sounds normal coming out of Akira's mouth. He forces an unconvincing laugh, and shakes his head. "You didn't have to fight so hard," he says, crouching next to Akira to just make _absolutely sure_ that he's going to be okay. 

"Yes I did," Akira says firmly.

"Okay then," Yu says. "If you say so."

"Yep." His eyes look up at Yu, searching his face for... something. 

"Whatever you heard wasn't real," Yu tells him.

"I know," Akira says, but there's naked relief on his face anyway. "Are you leaving?"

"If you'll be okay here," Yu says. "I mean--I don't know how much I can do for you, since you can't move on after you lose, but..." He trails off with a shrug.

"I'm fine," Akira says cheerfully. He pulls himself up so that he's sitting cross legged, and the _look_ in his eyes is one that Yu recognizes all too well. Trouble. "And I have an idea for getting out of here anyway."

"There's no way out once you've lost," Mitsuru says, and both of them look up at her, Yu wincing self consciously. There's enough room right here for him and Akira to have fought without ever getting close to her, and Yu had almost managed to forget that there was someone else listening. She's standing now, apparently mostly recovered from the fight she'd had with Akira. "Unless one of you has learned a way to get past them."

" _Maybe_ ," Akira says. "I think so. Probably. But I don't want to say too much in case..." He trails off, and gestures to the TV where General Teddie had appeared only a few minutes ago.

Mitsuru looks taken aback for a second, and then like she wants to argue. Then she looks at the TV too and gives Akira a grudging nod. "Alright," she says. 

"I'm sorry for our fight, by the way," Akira tells her. "I wanted to be able to keep going, and find out what's going on here, but--" he looks at Yu. "That didn't actually work out. _Thanks,_ Yu."

"If you can get _both_ of us past these walls," Mitsuru says. "Then we'll call it even."

"Deal," Akira says. 

"Do you actually have a plan?" Yu asks, dropping his voice slightly.

Akira nods. "It kind of relies on Lavenza showing up, but she said she'd catch up later, and she's pretty good at finding me."

"If I see her, I'll let her know you're looking for her," Yu promises.

"Just... be careful," Akira says. "When I left her, she was about to have a fight with her sister--"

"With _Margaret?"_

"No," Akira says. "Another sister. Elizabeth, she said her name was. Anyway, I just think..." A briefly uncertain look crosses his face. "I just think any fight between them is going to be a lot more dangerous than the rest of the fights here."

"Probably," Yu says. He stands again, and walks a few feet back just to make sure he _can._ The invisible walls that would have been there if he'd lost don't stop him at all. "Try to stay out of trouble?"

"Nope," Akira says.

"Fair enough," Yu says, and heads off down the hall. He hadn't really expected anything else, after all.

-//-

Lavenza finds her way without much difficulty to the place where Akira is. It's a relatively long walk, longer than it could have been in any real school, but at least Lavenza isn't hindered by the same invisible walls that seem to keep getting in the way of the contestants. The false school might be labyrinthine, but at least she can take the shortest possible path to get where she's going.

When she does eventually find her Trickster, she is slightly surprised to find him sitting on the floor, looking tired and slightly bruised, but relatively fine, talking with a woman Lavenza has not met before. She watches for a minute or so from the end of the hall, wondering mostly how he's managed to end up _here_ instead of getting into trouble somewhere deeper in the school. 

She eventually decides that he looks relatively well and in one piece, so she moves forward, letting herself be seen by both of the people in the hallway. The woman keeps up a wary expression, but Akira brightens on seeing her. "Lavenza!" he calls, jumping to his feet (and then immediately wincing). "How did your fight go?"

This is not the first time that Lavenza has fought with one of her siblings. Collectively, they are a powerful, stubborn, and oddly _sheltered_ group. They have limited ways of trying to understand each other, and for better or for worse, battles like this are one of them. And, while this particular faceoff with Elizabeth had been difficult and in some ways painful, it had not been as destructive as some that Lavenza has seen in the past. 

"It went as well as could be expected," she tells Akira. 

"Did you win?" he asks.

Lavenza shrugs, because things between herself and her siblings are always more complicated than that, and asks, "Did you?"

"I won once and lost once," Akira tells her. "But I lost to Yu, so I guess that's okay. Do you think you can help us get out?"

"Us?" Lavenza repeats, slightly thrown by the abrupt change of subject.

Akira gestures to behind Lavenza, where there is of course the woman she still hasn't been introduced to. "This is Mitsuru," Akira says. "I figured you should still be able to help me get past the invisible walls, and if you can help me do it, then there's no reason you can't help her too, right?" He shrugs, and gives her a hopeful look that Lavenza finds it hard to say no to.

"I don't see why that wouldn't work," she admits. She had been able to help him through the invisible walls before, even if it had been obviously uncomfortable for him. This is different, though. He's already been eliminated from this P-1 Tournament, which means that if she doesn't help him, he'll stay trapped behind those invisible walls like a caged animal.

She hates seeing her Trickster caged. 

So she walks up to him, takes him by the hand, and walks back with him. Akira grimaces and pulls faces as he passes through what Lavenza can't see and barely knows is there, but it works. They stand on the other side of the invisible walls, and Akira says, "And Mitsusu too?"

Lavenza rolls her eyes, because at least some level of objection feels necessary, and then helps Mitsuru through her own set of invisible walls in the same way that she had Akira. "You just make friends everywhere you go, Trickster, don't you?"

"We did fight first," Akira says.

"Why?"

"Because we wanted to keep going," Akira says. "And if we didn't fight, then neither of us would have been able to."

"But neither of you _were_ able to," Lavenza says.

"Well, yea," Akira says. "Because Yu showed up right after I won, but we didn't know that was going to happen."

"Come on," Mitsuru says, interrupting the conversation as she strides past the two of them. "We're out now, so I don't know about the two of you, but I fully intend to keep going, and find out what exactly is going on here."

"Yea," Akira says, and although Mitsuru is taller than him and moving fast, he manages to keep up by half hopping and running after her. Lavenza sighs, and resigns herself to following. "So--what exactly are _you_ doing here?"

Mitsuru hesitates, but then nods and seems to give in. She explains, in matter of fact sentences, about the group of Persona-users she leads. They're called Shadow Operatives ("That's _such_ a cool name," Akira says), whose members have been recruited from a group called S.E.E.S. that used to fight Shadows together when they were in high school (" _Mostly_ high school students," Mitsuru says, giving Akira a look out of the corner of her eye. "One of our members was younger then than you are now"). 

The Shadow Operatives had come here chasing... something. She seems to be keeping intentionally vague about what that something _is_ , but Lavenza picks up on a few things. She sometimes refers to what they had been chasing as cargo, and sometimes as something human, or human- _ish_ , and the upshot of the whole story seems to be that this potentially human-ish cargo had been stolen and spirited away to Inaba, and then through a TV to this corner of the metaverse.

It's a truly fascinating experience to be so underinformed about everything that has been happening here. Lavenza wonders if this is how Akira feels all the time when he's talking to her.

"What?" Akira asks, and Lavenza realizes she's been watching him for a while. "Do I have something on my face?"

"Only bruises," Lavenza says sedately. 

"So why are you looking at me, then?"

She only smiles, which makes Akira laugh. Mitsuru gives them a look that implies she still does not know what to make of them, but that she is giving the benefit of the doubt for now while they still have other things to worry about.

Lavenza isn't worried, though. She still does not know exactly what it is that's going on here, but she finds herself... trusting that things will work out for the best. She's trusting, she realizes, that the people that have been gathered here will be able to do what they need to, and get home.

Strange.

_"...nyone there...?"_

The disembodied voice crackles suddenly from nowhere and everywhere, and a part of Lavenza recognizes what it is--a person with a navigational Persona, trying to communicate with the others scattered throughout the fake school. Akira's the one that recognizes _who_ it is, though, and he reacts with an enthusiasm that's actually fairly impressive considering everything he's been through today.

"It's Rise!" he says. "I wonder if that means she's here too--I mean, she was missing before we came into the TV, but maybe she got here on her own somehow?"

"I recognize that voice," Mitsuru says. "Your... friend?"

Akira nods.

"Sounds a lot like the voice that's been narrating all the fights here."

"It _did_ sound a lot like her," Akira says. "But there's no way that was really her, just like there's no way General Teddie is the actual Teddie."

Lavenza doesn't say anything--she's listening, still, because she can hear other voices, faint for the moment but getting louder. "I think," she says, after a while of listening, "That she's trying to connect everyone together all at once."

And then all of a sudden the sound of a dozen or more voices come bursting out together, as Rise manages finally to connect everyone together. Most of the voices Lavenza does not recognize, or at least she recognizes them only in a vague way. But a few she knows, and finds herself smiling for a second or two before she catches the expression and puts it away.

It's hard to follow what any single person is saying, at first. Everyone is fighting for their chance to ask after their friends, or to check in and make sure that the people they had fought with are still alright. But eventually, slowly, the chatter starts to die away, and a single narrative emerges.

Rise is being held in the school's Announcement Room, presumably to keep her from using her navigation Persona to do exactly what she's doing now--to help everyone communicate with each other. Now that the culprit behind the tournament (the same General Teddie that's been projecting himself onto the TVs throughout the school) has left the room, she has the chance to help.

"So," Rise says, when all of that has been explained. "It... seems like there's only a few of you that are still moving around, right?" Her voice is shaky, Lavenza notices, but with a hint of iron behind it. 

"Yea," says another voice--one of Yu's friends, Lavenza thinks. Yosuke, maybe? "When we lose a match, we're stuck where we are."

"Not _necessarily_ ," Akira says, with a sideways grin in Lavenza's direction. 

There is a chorus of _should have known_ s _,_ and _of course he wouldn't follow the rule_ s from those people in the school that are familiar with Akira.

"He has some... interesting friends," Mitsuru says. Lavenza (realizing she's smiling again) ducks her head and looks away.

Another few voices chime in at this (Lavenza does not know any of the people these voices belong to), apparently friends of Mitsuru's who are happy to hear from her.

"Okay," Yu says. "With that taken care of--Rise, can you help us find where you're at?"

"Of course," Rise says. "Yu, you're definitely the closest..."

The conversation trails off into a series of directions, and coordination between Rise and the few people left that haven't been eliminated from the tournament. The three of them--Lavenza, Akira, and Mitsuru--are apparently the farthest from where they need to be.

Which is why, by the time they get there... it's all over.

-//-

A lot happens, in the Announcement Room. 

Yu is there, in the thick of it. The girl he had met earlier, who had introduced herself as Yasogami's Student Council president, turns out to be... _not_ the Student Council president. She's not even human, in fact, but what's called an Anti-Shadow Suppression Weapon. Yu is not--entirely sure what this means, but from context he can put the pieces together enough to understand that she is a kind of... robot with a heart. Her body is metal, sure, but there's real, raw emotion in every inch of her when she stands in the middle of that room and remembers her past.

Being designed as a weapon to fight Shadows. Being forced to train against other people like her. She says _sister units_ but Yu hears _sister_ , and something in his gut--the part that has still not forgotten fighting against Akira--revolts at the idea. When Labrys says that she is the only Anti-Shadow Suppression Weapon of her generation to have made it out of the facility where they'd been made, Yu realizes that he is actually, genuinely, angry.

Labrys talks about how she'd been forced to fight, again and again--

(Like they all have been, in this tournament)

\--how they'd been confined to a room with thick glass walls, where the only escape was to win--

(Like the invisible walls that had haunted them all since the tournament started).

She'd been brought into the TV World by... someone. Not even she knows who it had been, but she'd been left here, where her memories and her subconscious created the whole Tournament. Even her Shadow, disguising itself as _General Teddie_ just as her subconscious had disguised herself as a normal Yasogami student. 

Labrys faces her Shadow, rejects it, and Yu steps in to help defend her from it. He has to. He can't stand by after what he's heard from Labrys and do _nothing_. So he fights, and--with some encouragement--Labrys is able to accept her Shadow. The moment of triumph is tempered slightly when... something seems to hack into Labrys for a few minutes and actually take control of her, but they're able to help her through that, and everything is...

Not exactly fine, but at least manageable. For the moment. The two separate groups, the Investigation Team and the Shadow Operatives, exit the TV and stand in the fading evening light. This isn't over, but it's over _enough_ , for now, that they can go their separate ways. It's over enough, for right this second, even if they all know that the person that took Labrys and threw her into the TV, the person that hacked her after she accepted her Shadow, they're not done.

During the time that Labrys had been hacked, they'd learned some little pieces of what this person had wanted out of this whole tournament. To weaken them mentally, to try and turn their Persona back into Shadows for some... project of his. 

And that is very definitely not great.

But for now, while they have no leads and no ideas where to start looking, they go their separate ways.

"We appreciate your help," Mitsuru says, standing on the roadside next to the limousine she and her people had driven into Inaba. "But you understand that we'll be pursuing this on our own, from now on. This is too dangerous to involve a group of high school students in."

Yu weighs his options. He considers whether it would be a good idea to point out that it sounds like she and her friends had been fighting Shadows when _they_ were in high school. He considers pointing out that Akira is the youngest out of all of them, and had held his own against her. 

He looks at Mitsuru's face, considers whether there is any argument he could possibly make that would change her mind, and says, "I understand."

There are immediate cries of outrage from his friends, and Yu's expression goes slightly wooden as he tries to communicate through his eyes alone to just be patient a few minutes. 

"Thank you," Mitsuru says, and if she's at all surprised by how easily Yu had given in, she doesn't show it. And, to Yu's intense relief, the rest of the Investigation Team seems to get the message that this is not the time to ask questions.

(Yosuke has to step on Teddie's foot three times to get him to stop asking _but why wouldn't we keep helping?_ out loud)

And eventually Mitsuru and her people leave, taking Labrys with them, and it's just the Investigation Team and Akira left behind.

"Why did you tell them we weren't going to help?" Chie asks.

"Because she wasn't going to listen," Yu says. "And I _understand_ why she wasn't going to listen, because their group's been doing this for years, and we probably look like--well, like we don't know as much as they do because we're just a bunch of kids."

"Hey," Akira complains.

"I was talking about all of us," Yu says. "Not just you. They're adults and we're still in school, of course they're going to think they can handle this without us." Akira looks only slightly mollified. "But listen. I don't think this is over, and whatever it is, it's centered around Inaba. Whether they want us to be involved in this or not, we're _going_ to be. And we're going to investigate, and we're going to help. Alright?"

"Alright," Yosuke says. There are a few nods from other people. "So I guess we can meet up at Junes early tomorrow like usual, right? To see if we can figure out anything else?"

"Better make it a little later," Yu says. "Ten or eleven, maybe? I have a feeling that... well." He's fully aware of how beat up Akira looks right now, and although he hasn't seen his own face since all this started, he's sure he doesn't look like he's in much better shape. "I think we're going to have to spend some time explaining what happened to my uncle."

"Do we have to?" Akira asks. "Because I already had a whole lecture about how I specifically wasn't supposed to go into the TV or get into trouble over Golden Week."

"Yes," Yu says. "We do have to, because we're going to walk in and he's going to look at us and he's going to know that we were doing _something_ we weren't supposed to."

Akira lets out a heartfelt sigh. "At least I'm not going to be the only one in trouble this time."

"Tough luck, guys," Kanji says.

"Yea," Chie agrees. "I'm glad _my_ parents don't know about any of this."

And then everyone's heading home, and it's just Yu and Akira walking back to the Dojima house.

Akira's excited chatter fills most of the conversation, which Yu is grateful for. He listens, and offers a few comments, and mostly just lets Akira carry the conversation where he wants. 

"Are you really worried about this, Yu?" Akira asks after a while, and Yu realizes that Akira is now looking at him, waiting for an answer.

"I'm a reasonable amount of worried," Yu tells him. "We still don't know who kidnapped Labrys and started this whole tournament, remember? Things could get more dangerous."

"Probably," Akira says, and he looks so unphazed by this that Yu finds himself smiling.

"That doesn't worry _you_?" he asks.

"Nope," Akira says. "We can handle whatever happens."

"I'm glad you're confident, at least," Yu says. "I was--kind of thinking that we were done needing to fight Shadows."

Akira is quiet for a second or two. Then he says, "Lavenza keeps telling me that someday I'm going to get invited into the Velvet Room someday. So I know I'm not done yet."

Yu hasn't thought much about that, honestly. He'd known it in the back of his mind, that Akira's future will include another fight like the one they'd had last year, but since there are still so many unknowns, it's a hard thing to dwell on and plan for. "Are you okay with that?" he asks.

"Yes," Akira says.

"Just like that?" Yu asks.

"Yep. I like being a part of all this. I feel like it's something that I can do. I mean--I run around getting into trouble all the time, whether I want to or not. Where else is that ever going to be useful?" The words are casual, but when Yu looks down at Akira, there's real excitement there. And it hits Yu, all of a sudden, how he and Akira are on different sides of all this. How it's over--or mostly over--for him, how he's ready to think about what comes next, about high school graduation and then college, and with what he wants to eventually do with the rest of his life. For Akira, his time fighting Shadows is really only getting started.

"What about you?" Akira asks. "You really wouldn't want to keep doing this?"

"I don't think I would want to do what the Shadow Operatives do," Yu says. "No. I'll never stop fighting Shadows if it's something I need to do. And I like it--I like fighting with my friends, and I like making a difference. But--I don't know. I can see myself doing other things."

"Like what?" Akira asks.

Yu has not told anyone other than the councilor at his high school about what he wants to do after college. But Akira, he thinks, will understand. "I want to go to college and study town planning," he says quietly.

Akira's expression is carefully blank. _I have no idea why anyone would want to do something like that_ , the blankness says.

"And then I want to come back here," Yu says. "To Inaba. I want to do something to help it grow. I love this place, Akira, and I think that coming back and helping to make it better. I want to be _here_."

"Okay," Akira allows. "That--sounds like a good thing to spend your time on. _Almost_ as good as fighting Shadows." 

"Well I'm glad I got your approval, anyway," Yu says. "My mom found out, and she's not too excited about the idea."

"Why not?"

Yu shrugs. He hasn't checked his phone since coming out of the TV World--he's nervous to find out whether his mom has tried to reach out again to argue the point. "Mom didn't like growing up here. She left as soon as she could, and she's never seen it as anything other than a small town, dead end nowhere."

"That's not what it is," Akira says.

"I know," Yu says. "But she doesn't."

They're heading up the Dojima's street by now, and Yu stops Akira before they can get within sight of the window. "Listen," he says. "Don't tell anyone about that yet, okay? I want to work it out with my mom before I talk to anyone else."

"I won't," Akira says. "Anyway, I have a feeling we're going to spend the rest of the night being lectured."

Probably a fair point. 

The two of them head up the street, let themselves into the house, where they come face to face with an extremely exasperated looking Dojima.

"Alright," Dojima says, after he's let the two of them stand in the entrance for a minute or two, shuffling their feet and trying not to make eye contact while he eyes up their bruises. "Which one of you is going to give me an explanation?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In full disclosure, Akira being able to summon [Belphegor](https://megamitensei.fandom.com/wiki/Belphegor) as a persona is cheating slightly (he's level 61 in P4 and 37 in P5, and Akira is probably hovering around 20-25 at this point), but I also couldn't find anything else that would fit quite as well for Akira's strategy of 'throw the opponent off balance by summoning the stupidest looking Persona I can think of'


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finally found a P3 character I feel relatively confident in writing!
> 
> ...and it's Koromaru, who is a dog and therefore has no dialogue xD
> 
> (Sorry again about literally everyone else xD I swear I will play P3 someday)

In the morning, while her dad lectures Yu about staying out of trouble _("I was not expecting to have this conversation with you today, Yu. I expected to be having it with Akira, yes, but I did not think I would be having it with you.")_ and about his responsibility as the oldest kid, Nanako grabs Akira by the hand and pulls him into her room. 

"You have to tell me what happened," she informs him. "Because Dad's going to think I'm too young to know, and Yu's going to agree if Dad asks him to, so you _have_ to tell me."

"Sure," Akira says, and he tells her everything. He's always, ever since the first time she saw him accidentally push Yusuke into the TV in the living room, been good about that. She thinks it might be because he knows what it feels like to be younger than everyone else too. 

"There was a real robot?" Nanako asks, at the end of the story.

"There were _two_ ," Akira says. "Labrys and Aegis. I didn't really get a chance to talk to either of them, but I don't think 'robot' is exactly the right word? They were calling them, uh... anti-Shadow... something-something-something. It was long. And they were people, too. Like, they had thoughts and feelings and Persona."

Nanako tries to imagine this. Akira, who is very good at describing Shadows to her, had turned out to be not quite as good at describing how Labrys and Aegis had looked. Either that, or Nanako is just having a hard time picturing them.

She wishes, she realizes (and is _surprised_ to realize), that she'd been there to see it herself. 

"Do you think," she says. "When I'm older, I could be part of all these things that keep happening?"

"Do you want to be?" Akira asks. "I thought you were..." He hesitates, and then says, "I kind of thought you were scared of the TV World."

And Nanako kind of is. But last year, when the fog came to Inaba, and Yu and his friends had gone into the TV to stop Adachi, Nanako had stayed with Akira and her dad to protect her town. And it _should_ have been the most terrifying thing that's ever happened to her, but it wasn't. She'd had her dad and Akira with her, protecting everyone, and Yu fighting hard in the TV World to put everything back to normal, her whole _family_ fighting, and Nanako had not been scared at all like she would have been if she was alone.

"Maybe not as scared as I used to be," Nanako tells him.

Akira grins at her. "Then yea!" he says. "Sure, why not?" The smile fades, _just_ a little, and he adds, "But let's not talk to your dad about that plan, okay? I'm already in enough trouble for just what I'm doing, he's not going to love it if you're planning on joining too."

"I can keep a secret," Nanako says. She'd kept his, right? All the way up until Yu and her dad found out about it anyway. 

"But it'd be great if you came to fight with us," Akira says, with genuine enthusiasm. "I mean--it was really great last year when you were there, because you know pretty much everything about the Shadows, even though you'd barely had a chance to _see_ any of them--"

Nanako turns bright pink, which Akira (eventually) notices, and luckily after that he changes the subject. They're talking about completely different things when Nanako's dad finally finishes lecturing Yu, and he comes up the stairs to join them, looking a little embarrassed. 

"Is it my turn now?" Akira asks, already standing up.

Yu manages to smile. "He didn't say anything to me," he says. "So I'm assuming no."

"Cool," Akira says, and sits back down again. "So we're still going to try and figure out who was behind the tournament, right?"

"Yes," Yu says. "I don't think Dojima actually expects us to leave it alone, anyway. Mostly he was just upset that we weren't being careful enough and got hurt."

Akira nods. "He _usually_ doesn't try to tell me to stay out of trouble," he says. "Because he knows it isn't going to work. He just tells me to be careful."

"Speaking of being careful," Yu says, dropping his voice a little. "I didn't actually tell him that we were fighting each other, so--"

"You were _fighting each other_?" Nanako demands.

"Shh!"

She starts whispering too. "Akira, you didn't tell me that you were fighting Yu!"

"Well, I mean..." He looks embarrassed now too. "I did lose."

"Duh," Nanako says. "Yu's older."

Akira only grumbles a little. 

"So anyway," Yu says. "I think we should at least meet up with everyone at Junes today. We didn't get a great chance to exchange information after the tournament, and some of the others might have heard something that can help us start putting the pieces together. And then tonight, we should check the Midnight Channel again."

There's something about the way he says all this that makes it clear to Nanako that he's mostly talking to Akira and not to her. Which is... fine. She knows she'd be in a lot of danger if she got involved in their stuff. They have Persona, Nanako is just a normal seven year old. It's fine that they're going to solve mysteries without her.

"Can I watch the Midnight Channel with you guys?" she asks.

"Sure," Akira says.

Yu, who looks like he's still thinking it over, shoots Akira a _look_.

"What?" Akira says. "It's not dangerous to just sit and watch the Midnight Channel. Anyway, she _wants_ to."

Both of them look up at Yu, who does not last long. "Sure," he says. "Okay, just don't tell--"

"Don't tell Dad," Nanako finishes for him. "Got it." She likes being part of the secret keeping, every once in a while. 

And she doesn't even mind (so much) when the other two head off to Junes, and she stays behind at home. At least she'll get to stick around for the Midnight Channel tonight.

-//-

Yu does _not_ think that it's a great idea for Nanako to be around for the Midnight Channel, because after it had showed on it once this Golden Week already, he's worried that there are going to be more horrible surprises in store.

But Akira had been right when he pointed out that there's no actual danger in watching the Midnight Channel, and even in the worst case scenario where something comes on that a seven year old shouldn't be seeing, it's not that hard to just send Nanako out of the room.

(And, if Yu's being very honest with himself, Nanako is not most seven year olds--she's been through a TV World kidnapping already, as well as the day last year when Inaba had almost been consumed by fog. She'll _probably_ be able to handle anything she sees)

But he'd still rather she not see it at all, and right up until about 11:45 that night--long after he and Akira have come home from Junes--Yu holds out hope that maybe she'll just fall asleep and miss midnight completely. Then the door opens a little and she comes sidling in, and Yu decides to just shrug and accept it. This should be fine.

Should be.

The next few minutes pass without anything too exciting happening. There's plenty of whispering, some giggling from Nanako, and an occasional "Shh!" when one or the other of them remembers that Dojima is still downstairs. Yu stands by the window, letting the two of them have the couch, and keeps one eye on the clock, watching time tick down until midnight. And then--

Five minutes before it should have, the TV suddenly lights up. Nanako _gasps_ and grabs at Akira's arm. Akira starts a little, then looks at the clock hanging on the wall, and back over his shoulder at Yu.

Yu nods and then shrugs to indicate that he's noticed too, but has no idea why the Midnight Channel had started early, and then turns his attention toward the TV.

It's another sizzle reel, like the one that had started before the P-1 Tournament, with only a few differences in staging and contestants. Yu expects to see himself and the rest of the Investigation Team again, and he's not surprised to also several members of the Shadow Operatives appear on screen.

He could have done without seeing Akira, but there he is, looking as ready to fight as everyone else.

Yu looks over at Akira as the announcer's booming voice starts wrapping up his promotional spiel. "I guess there's no point in asking you to sit this one out," he says.

"No way!" Akira says. "Come on, Yu, I was _invited_ this time."

"I saw," Yu says. "That's what I'm worried about."

"I didn't even get to help, last time," Akira says. 

"You helped," Yu says.

"I got eliminated and couldn't do anything until it was too late--"

"Um," Nanako interrupts. "What's a Sister Complex Kingpin of Steel?"

Yu winces. He already has Akira bringing that up at every possible opportunity, and he does not want to also have this conversation. "It's... a very rude nickname that someone's decided to give me," he says.

"Oh," Nanako says. "Then how about Cheating Sneak-Thief Trickster?"

"I did _not_ cheat last time," Akira says hotly, even though technically he had, by breaking out of those invisible walls. And yes it had been helpful to figure out that it was possible to get out again after losing, but that doesn't mean it wasn't still cheating.

The screen cuts out as the sizzle reel ends, and is replaced with a timer counting down. 

(Ten... nine... eight... seven...)

"This didn't happen before the first tournament," Yu says. Akira jumps to his feet.

"Does this mean it's going to start right away this time?" he asks.

(Six... five... four...)

Yu bites back a curse in front of the younger kids, and instead says, "Nanako, you need to get--"

(Three... two... _one_ )

The TV and all the lights go off all at once as the timer gets to zero. Nanako jumps and makes a noise like a squeak. Akira, who is closer, reaches out and she grabs his hand with both of hers. "Wha--what's going on?" she asks.

Nothing good, Yu does not say out loud. It's impossible to tell what's happened based on just the information they have so far, but Izanagi is suddenly restless his mind and that usually does not happen unless Yu is somewhere near the TV World. "Can you stay here with her for a couple minutes?" Yu says to Akira. "I want to go take a look around."

"But--"

"I'll come back," Yu assures him, and Akira nods reluctantly.

Yu steps out of the bedroom and does a quick look around the house. All the electricity has gone out, and Yu's phone isn't working either. When he takes a look out of the window, he sees the familiar shapes of the street outside transformed by an unnatural looking red fog. Most worrying of all, though, is the fact that there's no sign of Dojima anywhere in the house. It's like he's just vanished.

Yu heads back upstairs and reports all this as calmly as possible, mostly for Nanako's sake. 

"Yu," Akira says. "The TV said we only have one hour this time."

"I noticed that," Yu says. Last time, the tournament had taken significantly longer than an hour. He bites his lip and considers their options. They can't afford to stay here and wait while their hour ticks down. They _also_ can't leave Nanako here alone. "We need to get to Junes," Yu says slowly. "The power's out, and cell phones aren't working either. Anyone else that saw the broadcast is going to be thinking of meeting up, though, and that's where we always go."

Akira's eyes dart sideways to Nanako, who looks like someone trying very hard not to look nervous. Yu can practically see his mind racing as he realizes the same thing Yu already has. That Nanako's going to be in danger no matter what, but that she'll be in the least amount of danger if she stays with them.

"Nanako," Akira says. "Remember how we were talking earlier about how you could come with us to fight Shadows when you're older?"

Yu had not known about this talk.

"Well," Akira says. "You're a whole day older now, and I think you're ready."

It's not the way that Yu would have tried to reassure Nanako that she'll be safe with them, but it wrings a smile out of her, so maybe that's good enough. "Nanako," he says. "We don't know what's going on here, but you need to stick with us until we figure it out, or until we find somewhere that you'll be safe. It might be dangerous outside right now, but I promise we're not going to let anything happen to you. Okay?"

Nanako takes a deep breath, hands twisting together on her lap. "Okay," she says.

"It'll be great," Akira says, and Yu really hopes that he's just putting on a brave face for Nanako's sake, because absolutely none of this sounds great. "Like an adventure."

"Okay," Nanako says. "I trust you guys."

Yu does his best to look reassuring, and tries not to think about all the ways this could go wrong.

-//-

Akira takes the lead as the three of them move through the streets, because he's the best at staying hidden, and for as long as they have Nanako with them, caution is as important as speed. It's because he's in the lead and paying the most attention to their surroundings, that he's the one that realizes first.

"Everything's in the wrong place," Akira announces, after only a block or two. "I mean--the streets started out okay, but... some of the houses are in the wrong places, and I don't think the streets up ahead are laid out the way they should be.

"Well that's... not good," Yu says. 

Akira nods in vigorous agreement. "It's like something's trying to... I don't know. Confuse us, or get us lost, or something." He points. "Like, there should be that street up here on the left, you know? Heads straight up to Junes. But it's just a dead end, now."

Yu rubs his hand over his face as he thinks this over. "I guess we'll have to keep heading in the general direction of Junes, and hope we find some streets that take us there."

"Yea," Akira says. "We could." He heads toward the dead end, and hops a fence into an empty yard. "Or we could just head straight there."

"Akira..."

"What?" Akira says. "It's not like there's anyone else around to complain." They haven't seen a sign of _anyone_ since they left the house. It's like everyone's vanished the same way Dojima had. "And we only have an hour, remember?"

Yu hesitates, but then follows, lifting Nanako over the fence before climbing over himself. "We'll give this a try," he says.

Things go relatively quickly, with the three of them traveling in a straight line, and not trying to stick to the meandering new layout of the streets. They reach Junes without running into absolutely anything else, but find Yosuke and Teddie just outside.

"You guys are okay," Yu says, with obvious relief, when the five of them have joined up into a little huddle.

"Yea," Yosuke says. "A little freaked out, but we're still in one piece." He glances at Nanako, then back at Yu. "She's...?"

"She was with us when the Midnight Channel came on," Yu says. "I don't know if that's why she's still here or not, but we didn't want to leave her home alone."

"Fair enough," Yosuke says.

"We'll make sure you're safe!" Teddie tells Nanako.

She smiles, and Akira can tell she's doing the best she can to stay brave. He thinks she's doing a pretty good job, honestly--he probably would have been freaking out a lot more than she is, if he'd been here with no Persona to defend himself.

"I know you all will," she tells him. 

"Have either of you seen anyone else?" Yu asks Yosuke and Teddie.

"Nope," Teddie says.

"No one," Yosuke agrees. "We just figured that everyone would be heading here. Not that we would have made it if Teddie hadn't been able to sort of smell where we were heading. Did you see what's up with the streets and everything?"

Teddie sneezes.

"Yea," Yu agrees. "Everything's all been... rearranged." 

Akira lets himself tune out a little bit as Yu and Yosuke start talking about which members of the Investigation Team are most likely to be able to find their way here. He's feeling fidgety and distracted by the fact that they only have one hour (less than an hour now) until... _whatever_ happens. He's just starting to think that maybe he should say something about the deadline, when he hears footsteps coming toward them.

"Hey," he says. "Guys..."

And then Yosuke--a second Yosuke--steps into view. 

Akira's eyes go wide. Yu steps in front of Nanako. Teddie _immediately_ starts freaking out.

Between the fact that Yosuke is already with them, and Teddie sniffing the second Yosuke out as a Shadow, things go bad _pretty_ quickly. The Shadow Yosuke doesn't seem to mind that he's been outed as not the real Yosuke, but insists that one of them has to fight him. 

Yu steps forward without any kind of hesitation, because of course he does. "Akira?" he says.

"Yea?" Akira says.

"I want you to take Nanako and get out of Inaba, if that's something you can do right now."

"What?" Akira demands. "But Yu--"

"I don't know if it's even possible with the way everything's... weird," Yu says. "But _if_ it is, I think you'll be the one to figure out how to do it. Okay?" 

"Um--" Because on the one hand, he really wants to be able to help this time, unlike in the last tournament where he'd just... been eliminated. But on the other hand, _Nanako_. Yu and Yosuke and Teddie can meet up with the rest of the Investigation Team, and it makes sense, probably, for Akira to be the one to go off alone with Nanako. "Okay."

"Akira..." Nanako whispers.

Akira glances the ring that the Shadow Yosuke has summoned from nowhere to surround himself and Yu, and he decides that not only should they get out of here, they should get out of here _now_ , before Nanako has to see any fighting.

"Come on, Nanako," he says. "They'll be okay."

"But," Nanako protests as they start running. " _Akira!"_

"They've been through worse stuff than this," Akira says, without slowing down. By this point the sounds of fighting have started behind them, loud but growing more and more distant. "I promise they'll be okay."

"But that wasn't what I was trying to say," Nanako says, and points away from Junes, toward the maze that the town has become. "Look."

Akira stops, and looks.

"Oh," he says.

There's a towering spire of black and red in the distance, near the school district. From here, it looks like it's right around where the high school should be. The sight of it sets Akira's teeth on edge, and makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand on edge.

"What _is_ that?" Nanako asks.

"I have no idea," Akira says, and even though in other circumstances he'd be heading straight there to find out, he forces himself to turn deliberately away from it instead. "But come on. We need to try and get out of town. The others will figure that out."

"But..." Nanako starts, and then lets the protest trail off into silence. "Is it going to be okay?" she asks.

"Oh yea," Akira says, who does not feel at all sure that it will be. "Definitely."

" _Akira_."

"Probably," he lets himself admit, because he doesn't like lying to her. "If anyone can fix it though, it'll be Yu and his friends."

"Okay," Nanako says, and this time she lets him lead her away from both Junes and the creepy tower in the distance without complaint.

Akira tried not to think about how he's responsible for her now. All on his own, with everyone else headed for who-knows-where, probably the tower that's in the opposite direction of where he and Nanako are running now. If anything happens to her--

But nothing does happen. There are no more Shadows, not the normal kind and also not any like the one they'd just seen that's a copy of Yosuke. The worst thing they face for the next few minutes are more distorted, empty streets. Akira doesn't have any particular plan of where they should go, because the whole idea had been to just get Nanako out of town, and theoretically going straight for long enough in _any_ direction will take her out of Inaba. So he picks streets and turns at random, heading generally northeast and trying not to let his sense of direction get confused with how much everything has changed.

They get to the Samegawa Flood Plain at last, which is weird because it should be in a completely different part of town, but at this point Akira can't even force himself to feel surprised by that. Instead, he just takes in the long, straight path in front of them, and the two figures standing about halfway down it.

Akira is too far away to see details, but even from here he can tell that one of them is a dog and the other one is wearing a school uniform he doesn't recognize. Since they haven't seen anyone else at all here since leaving Junes, a stranger out walking his dog sets off all of Akira's mental alarm bells. He hesitates, though, because he's honestly not sure whether it would be safer to keep Nanako with him or send her to hide somewhere nearby.

The pause costs him, because during the time where he's standing still and uncertain at the mouth of the path, the stranger spots him. He doesn't say anything--they're too far away to hear each other, anyway--but his body language is a little sharper now, and he starts walking toward Akira and Nanako.

"Do you know that guy?" Nanako asks, voice dropping to a whisper.

"Nope," Akira says, but doesn't say anything else because the stranger is getting close enough to hear them. Now that he's gotten closer, Akira can see that the stranger is probably only a little bit older than he is, maybe in his second or third year of middle school. The uniform _really_ isn't familiar, and there aren't enough schools around Inaba for Akira to not know what all of them look like by now. 

When the boy stops several feet away and seems to just be looking at the two of them, Akira decides to speak first. "Hi!" he calls. "You're, uh--you're not from around here, right?"

He wants to know who this guy is and where he'd come from. 

(And, actually, why he'd brought his dog...?)

The boy doesn't answer for a second, but the dog growls, and when Akira looks down he sees a flash of angry yellow eyes. Shadow eyes. His gaze snaps back up to the boy, mouth open to warn him, but instead he meets another set of yellow eyes, and realizes.

"You're both Shadows," he says. Hopes. Because if they're just angry, real people, he doesn't think he'll be able to fight.

"What," the boy says, and Akira doesn't know what this guy is supposed to be like or even who he is, but he thinks the cruel smile on his face now doesn't sit right there. "You figured it out already?"

"Wasn't that hard," says Akira, who is trying to sound like he hadn't been guessing, and also trying to figure out how he's supposed to get Nanako away from here.

"Well I guess it wasn't like I was trying to hide it," the Shadow kid says. 

"So what are we supposed to do now?" Akira asks. "Fight, I guess?" That might at least be enough of a distraction to let Nanako run.

"I guess you're not as dumb as you look," says the Shadow kid. "Then again, you did walk yourself and your friend right into this fight, so maybe you _are_ as dumb as you loo--"

" _Kala-Nemi_!"

There's a disorienting moment as the same voice as the one belonging to the Shadow Akira has _just_ been talking to shouts out suddenly from behind him. Does that mean that there are _two_ Shadows...?

There's a Persona coming at him when he turns, so he ducks, and... there's a _whoosh_ of air that sends his hair flying, as the Persona speeds past himself and Nanako, toward the Shadow kid, knocking him back. So this new version probably _isn't_ a Shadow, Akira figures.

(Probably)

"Hey!" he shouts, because this Shadow and the fake Yosuke had both seemed okay with being unmasked. "Whoever you are, are you a real person or a Shadow?"

"I'm no Shadow," says the not-Shadow version of the Shadow kid. He _also_ , Akira can't help noticing, has a dog with him.

"What about your dog?" he asks.

"Koromaru is also not a Shadow."

The dog barks and wags his tail a little.

"Cool," Akira says. "Neither are we. Nanako, we're running _that_ way, okay?" He nudges her and points back toward the newcomer. 

"Okay," Nanako says, and she clings to him as they run away from the Shadow and back in the other direction.

Akira pulls up when they're close to the person and the dog (who do in fact look exactly like their Shadows). "Thanks for the distraction," he says. "I'm Akira, this is Nanako--"

"Hi," Nanako says, still pressed up close to Akira's side.

"I guess you're a Persona-user too--oh! Do you maybe know Mitsuru Kirijo?"

The boy nods, looking at Akira with more interest than he'd been showing a second or two before. "Yes," he says. "My name is Ken Amada. I'm a reserve member of the Shadow Operatives."

Still a _cool_ name, Akira can't help thinking, even under these circumstances.

The dog barks again, and there's a bare smile on Ken's face as he continues the introduction. "And this is Koromaru," he says. 

"I'm Akira Kurusu," Akira says. "This is Nanako Dojima."

"Nice to meet you," Nanako says, staying polite even though Akira can see on her face that she's still scared.

Ken hesitates a second, looking down at Nanako (Akira assumes he's about to ask why a seven year old is here, but he doesn't--maybe he's used to being the youngest one himself, with Mitsuru's group apparently all so much older). Then he says to Akira, "You're one of the Inaba Persona-users, aren't you? You were in Mitsuru's files that she put together after everything that happened a couple days ago."

"She has a file on me?" Akira asks.

(He wonders if it mentions Belphegor anywhere)

"She put together a file on all of you from the P-1 Tournament," Ken says.

Still cool, Akira decides. 

A sound from behind them makes all three--four, if you count the dog--look back at the Shadows. They're starting to get back up to their feet, recovering from the unexpected attack by Ken's Persona. 

And they've been joined by another Shadow, Akira can't help noticing, even though none of them had seen this one creep up onto the path to join the little huddle. A little shorter than Ken's, not quite looking in their direction.

He knows before he even sees the face, whose Shadow it is. His stomach gives a sick little lurch, and he thinks about how much he _does not want to fight his own Shadow_. He's kind of really hoping that these Shadows aren't as strong as the ones in the TV World that they've all faced before awakening their Persona, Akira just... does not want to deal with it.

"I can take yours if you'll take mine," he says to Ken, who is now frowning at the group of Shadows. He tries to keep his voice as upbeat as possible, half because he doesn't want to freak Nanako out, and half because he doesn't want Ken (who is closer to his age than any Persona-user other than Yusuke, and is a part of Mitsuru's cool sounding Shadow Operatives, and has _already_ had to save him and Nanako once) to think he's scared.

"But that would probably mean you would be fighting my Shadow as well as Koromaru's," Ken says. "I've run into one of these Shadow people already since I got here. They can summon Persona just like the real versions."

Akira frowns. "But your _dog_ can...?"

"He has a Persona as well," Ken informs him.

"How does a dog get a Persona?" Nanako blurts out, half a second before Akira can ask the exact same question.

"Maybe that's something we should talk about later," Ken says. He looks back at the group of Shadows, then at Akira. "I... don't particularly want to fight my Shadow either. If you think you can handle two at once..."

He's sure that he's going to try it, anyway, and hope that it won't turn out to be a terrible idea. "Yea," he says. "It'll be fine. Nanako, you stay back here, okay?"

"Okay," she agrees, and Akira shares one last look with Ken (just to make sure they're both still on the same page, and that he's not running face first into a fight with _three_ Shadows, one of which is his) before running.

The fight... does not go as badly as Akira had been afraid it might. Compared to the fight a couple days ago with Yu, or even the one with Mitsuru, it's easy. Maybe about the same as when he'd fought Naoto, and only the fact that there are two Shadows this time to keep track of makes it slightly trickier.

(The hardest part, really, is keeping one eye on the other fighting ring that has descended from nowhere to contain Ken and Koromaru's fight against _his_ Shadow. It's both creepy and hard to look away from)

But eventually both fights end, and there's a kind of--flurry of light that flies up and away from where the rings had been, back toward town. Akira watches it go with his face furrowed in confusion (he's never seen anything like that before, not even in the first tournament a couple of days ago) before looking around for Nanako, Ken, and Koromaru.

Everyone's still in one piece ( _good_ ), and Nanako, who had been afraid would be terrified by all the fighting, instead has her eyes wide open, an expression of intense interest on her face instead of fear ( _awesome_ ). He's not sure if it had been seeing the three Shadows be defeated that had helped her to feel better, or if it's her general interest in Shadows showing.

(She'd picked up the habit of taking painstaking notes on all the Shadows Akira--and, eventually, Yu--ran into in the TV World last year, and the interest has not faded even now that Akira's going in much less often)

(Honestly, she's better at remembering how Shadows fight and what their weaknesses are than he is)

"You're okay?" he asks anyway, just to be sure.

"That wasn't what I expected at _all_ ," Nanako says, eyes still wide.

"But you're okay?"

She nods, so Akira turns to Ken and Koromaru. "You guys are both okay?"

"We're fine," Ken says. "Are you?"

"Pretty much," Akira says. "I don't know if the Shadow fights the same way that you do, but if it does, you're a really good fighter."

"The Shadows were all copying how you fight really well," Nanako says. "I was watching both fights, and it would have been hard to tell who was real and who wasn't, if I didn't already know." She hesitates, then adds, "But I think the Shadows fought a little bit... meaner."

"That's interesting," Ken says thoughtfully. "And probably helpful to know." He looks at Akira, and asks, "Are you two trying to get to the tower too?"

"No," Akira says. "Nanako doesn't have a Persona, so she can't fight and someone needs to get her somewhere that will be safer. _Hopefully_ safer. I guess we don't actually know for sure that there won't be Shadows outside Inaba, unless you came from there and can tell us?"

Ken shakes his head. "We came in a helicopter," he says. "So I didn't have a good view of what was happening on the ground until we landed here."

He says this perfectly matter of factly, as if riding into a Shadow invasion on a helicopter is something that happens every day.

"I guess we'll just keep going then," Akira says. "And hope for the be--"

" _No_ ," Nanako says suddenly.

"What?" Akira says.

"Didn't you hear what they said on the TV at the beginning?" Nanako demands. "We only have an hour, and it's _less_ than an hour now, and the tower down by where the high school should be is obviously the most suspicious thing so you should be going there instead of trying to take care of me."

Yu is going to kill him if he takes Nanako somewhere as obviously, in your face dangerous as that tower. And if anything happens to her, he's not going to be able to live with himself.

But on the other hand, something bad _is_ going to happen at the end of the hour, and Akira feels edgy and antsy at the idea that he could be doing something and isn't. He hadn't actually done anything to help during the last tournament, and in this one he hasn't done anything other than run away with Nanako. Because yea, he wants to get Nanako somewhere safe, but there might _not_ be anywhere safe...

"Anyway," Nanako says. "There were rings during the fight, and everything dangerous happened inside. So... I should be safe."

"That's only if whoever sets this up sticks to the rules," Akira says. "Which I wouldn't, if I was the one organizing an evil Persona death tournament."

"You wouldn't stick to the rules _anyway_ ," Nanako says.

"Okay," Akira says, because it's true and because he will absolutely break the rules of this tournament in any and all ways that will help him win, just as soon as he figures out how to do that. "No, but--but that's not the _point_. If I can break the rules, so can whoever sets it up."

"But bad things are going to happen _and that's more important!"_

The sheer force behind Nanako's shout takes Akira a little bit by surprise. Her eyes have narrowed into an expression of absolute determination, and he's sure, looking at her, that she's aware of how dangerous it might turn out to be, and she wants to go anyway.

"Okay," he says. "I guess--Ken, do you mind if we stick together, since you're heading there anyway?" If nothing else, sticking in a group means that if they only run into one Shadow in the future, someone will be able to stay out of the fight and with Nanako.

To his credit, Ken doesn't ask if either of them is sure, although from his expression, he's not entirely convinced. "Okay," he says. "Let's get going."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter this time, sorry about that, but this is where the chapter wanted to end, so this is where it's ending!
> 
> (Also, consolation prize, if you're reading this as it comes out, the next chapter of Forearmed is like... 14,000 words and counting, and I'm hoping to have that up by Sunday. So hopefully that'll make up for this one :P)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As per usual, I apologize wholeheartedly for any Shadow Operatives that I wrote badly. They are all lovely, and I genuinely hope I can find the time to sit down and play P3 soon so I can actually get them write in future.

They take as much time as they dare deciding which direction to go, because even if the tower is a pretty obvious landmark to be headed toward, there's still the labyrinthine quality of the rest of Inaba to worry about. And, because they're on the Samegawa floodplain now, with the river running along one side of it, Akira's earlier strategy of cutting through yards to make a beeline to where he's going just isn't going to work. Trying to cross the river on their own seems like just as bad of an idea in this twisted version of reality as it would have been in the real world.

Eventually they figure it out--or at least, they make a best guess and hurry off in that direction--and manage to walk for... ten minutes, maybe? Fifteen? Akira can't stop counting time down in his head, trying to guess how much they still have left before the deadline. He can't stop feeling like whatever's going to happen at the end of the hour is going to be... bad. The red fog here sets him on edge so much more than even the yellow fog last year that had almost eaten all of Inaba. Yeah, obviously that had been _bad_ , but this fog isn't exactly friendly either. It gives everything an angry red tint that makes Akira feel uncomfortable in his own skin.

Nanako, honestly, is handling it better than he is. She's not exactly calm, he can see that in her eyes, the way she's watching absolutely everything, but she's freaking out... a little less visibly than Akira feels like he is.

Ken is the first one to break the silence, which is kind of a relief because _any_ kind of conversation has to be better than listening to the silence of the fog pressing in on them.

"How did you get involved in all this?" he asks.

"Huh?" Akira shakes himself out of his thoughts and glances over at Ken. "I mean, we saw the Midnight Channel broadcasting about the tournament again, and I wasn't going to just stay home while bad things happened."

"I didn't mean just today," Ken says. "I meant all of it. How you got a Persona and started to fight."

"I sort of just stumbled into it," Akira says. "It was an accident. And then at the beginning my friend--" Lavenza is a little too much to try and explain right this second. "She kept trying to convince me to stay away, which I think is probably part of the reason I kept going back. Why, what about you?"

Ken looks uncomfortable, and Akira thinks he sees him looking back at Nanako for a second before he answers. "I--had something I needed to do," he says. "Something I _thought_ I needed to do, anyway. It was complicated."

Definitely a sore subject, Akira decides, and even though part of him wants to push out of sheer curiosity, he bites his tongue. Even without knowing any part of what had happened to Ken, he can tell it hadn't been good. So he changes the subject instead. "Are you the only one that's--you know. Like our age?" he asks. "I know I didn't meet all the Shadow Operatives before, but it seems like everyone else is way older. And really intense."

Although Ken is pretty intense too, actually.

Ken nods. "I joined when I was in elementary school," he says. "And everyone else was in high school."

"Me too," Akira says.

"You never technically _joined_ ," Nanako pipes up.

"Okay," Akira admits. "I mostly snuck around and tried not to let anyone else know I had a Persona. But they _did_ let me fight with them after they found out."

"And Yusuke's the same age as you anyway," Nanako adds. "So it's not _exactly_ the same."

"Okay," Akira says. "Yeah, I guess it's technically not." He kind of has a hard time imagining what it would have been like if he'd been honest with Yu from the beginning, and somehow _had_ gotten onto the Investigation Team. But Ken had managed to do that, and Akira definitely... has some feelings about that.

Right here and right now, with everything else that's going on, he doesn't have time to sort out exactly what those feelings _are_ , but he's definitely having them. A little bit of jealousy, maybe, because Akira's never completely felt like he was as included as he could have been. But--

But at the same time, a part of him is thinking _better him than me_. He doesn't think he would have been as good of a Trickster, if he'd been part of a team from the beginning.

He realizes that Ken's kind of watching him and Nanako bicker with his eyebrows raised, and returns the expression with a sheepish smile. "Sorry," he says. "We kind of got sidetracked."

"It's alright," Ken says. "I guess I was just wondering--" He shrugs, and doesn't finish.

"Go ahead," Akira says.

"Well," Ken says. "This probably isn't the time for it, but do you ever feel like everyone else is trying to keep you away from anything dangerous that's going on? Like they think you won't be able to handle it because you're--you're too young? Or they want you to just live as a kid because you're a kid?"

"Sometimes, I guess," Akira says, considering the question. "I mean--I think sometimes I don't get a chance to do what everyone else is doing because they're all older and tougher and have stronger Persona than I do." Like when they went to fight Adachi at the end of last year, or even Namatame before that. Even just a few _days_ ago, with the first P-1 Tournament, Akira had lost his fight to Yu, and because of that he hadn't been able to make it in time to help with the big, final showdown.

But...

"But I don't think it's because they're trying to keep me away from anything. Not _really_. I fought by myself for a long time instead of being able to rely on other people, and they're all stronger than me because they had each other." He grins. "But someday I'll catch up. I'm not going to stop fighting until I do."

"I haven't been fighting much since--well, everything that happened a few years ago." Ken shifts uncomfortably, and Koromaru stretches his neck upward to bump his head against Ken's fingers. "I'm part of the Shadow Operatives, but only... on reserve. I haven't been asked to do any real fighting, and I think that all anyone wants is for me to just--live a normal life as a child."

"What's wrong with that?" Nanako asks.

"I don't know if it's what I want," Ken says. "I don't _know_."

Akira shrugs. "I mean," he says. "I don't think I really know what normal is anymore." He gestures to himself and Nanako. "For us, normal is when I go into the TV World on Saturday after school, and then after I'm done, we have dinner together and I tell Nanako all about the Shadows I fought."

"And then Dad lectures Akira about not being careful enough," Nanako adds.

Akira makes a face. Unfortunately, Dojima lecturing him about being more careful in the TV World _has_ become a normal part of their Saturday routines. Even though he definitely _is_ being careful, and it's not his fault that he's only one person and he can't just focus on healing all the time when he's by himself, so sometimes he comes home with bruises or scratches. "But anyway," he says to Ken. "My _point_ is that... normal is what you make it, right? It doesn't matter if you're younger than everyone else or not."

"Maybe," Ken says. 

Nanako perks up suddenly, interrupting the conversation. "Do you hear that?" she asks, stopping abruptly in her tracks.

Akira hadn't, but instead of blurting this answer out, he closes his eyes and actually tries to listen before saying anything. From somewhere up ahead, he realizes that he actually _can_ hear the sound of fighting. "Yeah," he says. "Let's go see who it is."

He starts running without waiting for an answer, and after a second or two the rest follow him. They don't have to go far, luckily--the only reason they hadn't been able to _see_ the fight as soon as they heard it turns out to be the fog. As they get a little closer, the fog clears to the point that Akira can make out two familiar figures, mid-fight.

"Is--" Nanako is panting a little (Akira feels a flash of guilt when he remembers that her legs are so much shorter than the rest of them). "Is that... Rise?"

It is, which is weird enough by itself, because Akira has never seen Rise use her Persona for anything other than navigating until now. The fact that she can use it to fight at all is definitely a surprise. But the _more_ surprising part of this scene is who she's fighting with, because he recognizes Elizabeth. 

He hadn't actually seen any of the fight between Elizabeth and Lavenza during the first tournament, but he _has_ seen Lavenza fight in the past, and (although he'd never say this to Lavenza's face) he's been assuming that since Elizabeth is the older sister, she's probably more powerful. The fact that she's here fighting with Rise, who maybe hasn't ever even fought before, makes Akira feel very, very worried.

"Which one of them is the Shadow?" Nanako asks.

"I don't think there's any way for us to tell," Ken says. "Maybe if we'd gotten here before the fighting started..."

"Mmm..." Akira hesitates, then says, "I'm not sure that either of them is a Shadow."

"Why not?" Ken asks.

"I don't think a Shadow version of Rise would use her Persona like that," Akira says. "She doesn't usually fight, and the Shadows seem like they're trying to be copies of us." It didn't make a lot of sense for Rise to have figured out how to fight with her own Persona, but at least it makes _more_ sense than the idea that her Shadow would be able to do more with it than Rise can.

"What about..." Nanako points at Elizabeth.

"That's Elizabeth," Akira tells her. "Remember, I told you about her? Lavenza's sister?"

Nanako nods. 

"I don't think a Shadow would _dare_ impersonate her," Akira says bluntly. He'd only met Elizabeth very briefly during the last tournament, but he'd gotten the definite impression that she wasn't the kind of person that would be too happy to have a Shadow pretending to be her.

(Can the attendants of the Velvet Room even have Shadows? They seem to have a different relationship to Persona than most people)

(Add it to the endless list of questions he needs to ask Lavenza even though he knows she'll never answer)

"Why would they be fighting if neither of them is a Shadow?" Nanako asks.

"Because I _think_ Elizabeth is a little bit crazy," Akira says. "Maybe."

This (of course) happens to be the exact moment that the fight wraps up, meaning it's suddenly quiet enough for the two fighters to hear exactly what Akira had said.

"But crazy in a _good_ way," he says, backpedaling quickly as Elizabeth looks over at them.

"What are you guys doing here?" Rise asks, which luckily seems to be enough of a distraction that Elizabeth doesn't have the chance to (or chooses not to, more likely) comment on Akira's earlier comment. 

"Trying to get to the school," Akira says, pointing up at the tower. "What about you?"

"I was just coming back on the late train," Rise says. "From Okina?" She's panting from the fight, her face is red and her voice slightly higher than normal. 

Akira nods. Rise continues.

"So the train stopped, and when I got to town, everything was like this. I haven't seen anyone else here until Elizabeth showed up and helped me with my Persona."

Helped, Akira notices. Maybe that's how Rise had been able to fight with her Persona all of a sudden? It would kind of make sense that if anyone could do something like that, it would be an attendant of the Velvet Room.

"Well there's some weird stuff going on," Akira tells her. "And Shadows are impersonating us and the members of the Shadow Operatives, so it's probably good you can fight too. Oh--" He gestures around vaguely at the rest of the group. "This is Ken and Koromaru. They're both part of the Shadow Operatives, too."

"What about Nanako?" Rise asks.

Akira only shrugs. "She was with me and Yu when everything went--weird," he says. "I guess maybe that's why she didn't disappear like everyone else did?"

"So everyone else really is gone?" Rise asks. "I mean--I didn't see anyone on my way here from the train, but it's never very crowded out here at night anyway."

"Everyone's gone but us Persona-users," Ken confirms.

"Persona-users and also Nanako," Akira adds. "And we still don't know why she's still here."

"Of course," a new voice says. "The answer to the question that would make the _most_ sense is if she had a Persona as well."

There's a brief pause, as everyone seems to realize in the same moment that Elizabeth has joined the conversation. Then Akira says (a little nervously because, if he's being totally honest, Elizabeth scares him a little), "But Nanako _doesn't_ have a Persona."

"No?" Her voice _almost_ sounds surprised, and Akira might have been fooled if her expression had shown any kind of surprise at all.

"Um," Akira says, glancing down at Nanako for a second and then looking back up at Elizabeth. "No, she doesn't. I think probably we would have noticed."

"Ah, well. Maybe someday." She makes a dramatic gesture, raising both arms upward. "In any case, I think I have helped enough here. Time to vamoose--"

"Wait!" Akira blurts, stepping forward before she has a chance to--what, disappear?

(He wouldn't put it past her to be able to do that)

She pauses, arms still raised, looking at him expectantly. 

Actually, everyone's kind of looking at him, which is just a little bit embarrassing. "Um," he says. "Have you seen Lavenza around here anywhere?"

Nanako giggles, and he prays to anyone that's listening that she isn't going to make a joke about girlfriends _right now_ in front of Elizabeth.

"I have not," Elizabeth says, sounding perfectly cheerful. "But if I do see her, I would be happy to pass along the message that you're looking for her."

"Great," Akira says. "Thank you." 

Rise's laughing now too, _great_ , like there's anything wrong with asking someone if they've seen your friend, especially when they're sisters anyway, and if _anyone_ would know where Lavenza is, it would probably be someone from the Velvet Room.

(He would have felt a lot better going through this Tournament if she _was_ here, is the thing)

-//-

This tournament, Yu decides, is a lot worse than the first one had been.

He thinks it has something to do with the way the tournament has spilled out into the real world, red mist creeping into every corner of Inaba, corrupting it into a labyrinth worse than what they'd had to deal with in the fake copy of Yasogami during the first tournament.

That, and the time limit. He doesn't have any actual way of keeping track of the time as their hour counts down, because phones and clocks and everything electronic seems to have just _stopped_ after the broadcast just before midnight, but he's sure they have to be running out of time by now. He thinks they have--half an hour, maybe? Or maybe less?

And _yes_ , he thinks he's getting closer to the end, closer to reaching the top of the tower that's replaced Yasogami in this weird, red fogged world, but he has no idea if he's getting close _enough_.

(He's pretty sure that no one else is closer than he is, though, which does nothing to subtract from the stress he's already feeling)

And then--as he climbs up _another_ set of stairs, reaching _another_ twisted school hallway filling itself with blood red mist, as he takes a breath and recalibrates for the next floor, eyes already sweeping the area for any clue to which way might lead to another staircase--

Suddenly, he's in the Velvet Room.

It's a relief, honestly, to be there. Partly this is because he's (almost) sure that time spent here will not count toward the one hour deadline still rapidly racing toward them, and partly because this is a place that he's come to associate more and more with peace. No matter how bad things get, nothing has ever wanted to hurt him in the Velvet Room.

He looks around to see who else is here, and is not surprised to see that the small space is crowded, again, with Margaret and Lavenza on the other side, and Akira sitting next to him. Yu gives Akira a sideways once over immediately, but although he's showing enough bruises and scrapes to prove he's been in a fight since they last saw each other, none of his injuries look that serious. So that's the good news--the bad news is that if Akira's here, that means he probably hasn't been able to get out of Inaba with Nanako.

"--was looking for you," Akira is in the middle of saying to Lavenza. He'd apparently gotten here slightly earlier than Yu had, going by the fact that he's already had time to start making himself comfortable. Yu winces a little at the fact that Akira's pulled his feet up onto the seat, and has to bite his tongue to keep from telling him to keep his shoes off the furniture. This probably isn't the time for that.

"Things have been a little bit hectic here," Lavenza tells Akira, with a trace of apology in her tone. "And we were not expecting something like this to happen so soon after the last event."

"Neither were we," Yu points out, deciding that this is as good a time as any to jump into the conversation. "But we're here now, so--"

"We can compare notes again?" Akira asks. He turns to face Yu, but doesn't exactly meet his eyes. "So--we're not trying to get out of Inaba anymore, first of all."

"I figured you wouldn't have been brought here if you'd gotten out," Yu says. "I guess there's something stopping you?"

"Not exactly," Akira says. "I mean, _probably_ not. But we ran into a couple of the Shadow Operatives--"

Yu nods. He's seen a few of them so far himself.

"And also Rise, and both of them were able to get into Inaba no problem. So we'd be able to leave, I think, I just... don't know if there would be anywhere to go if we _did_. Rise wasn't even in town when her train stopped, so whatever's happening is probably just going to keep going if we leave." He fidgets a little. "But I mean... we didn't get far enough to check for sure, because we're, um..."

Honestly, Yu tells himself, telling Akira to walk away from this probably hadn't been a plan with a high chance of success anyway. "So where are you now, exactly?" he asks.

"The Velvet Room," Akira answers immediately.

" _Akira_."

"Almost at the school," Akira says. "We all stuck together though, so if we run into any more Shadows, there's four of us that can fight."

"Four?" Yu echoes. "You said you're with two of the Shadow Operatives, so shouldn't that be three?"

"Four," Akira says. "When we ran into Rise, she was fighting with Elizabeth, and somehow I guess that helped her awaken her Persona into something that could fight?"

(On the other side of the room, Margaret and Lavenza exchange a _look_ )

(Yu recognizes this look, because he's seen it fairly often at the Dojima household--apparently Elizabeth is the one in this family who most often finds herself in trouble)

"Even if Rise _can_ fight with her Persona," he tells Akira. "She's not going to be used to it. The rest of you are going to need to keep an eye on her, okay? Her and Nanako."

He doesn't like having to ask Akira to take on that responsibility, but Nanako has no Persona, Rise is used to using hers for navigation and nothing else, and whichever member of the Shadow Operatives Akira had run into, they're not _here_.

"Okay," Akira agrees.

"And," Yu adds. "I want you to be really careful if you do have to fight. Try to avoid it if you can."

"I'm not going to get hurt," Akira says, rolling his eyes.

"That's not it," Yu says. "A couple times after fights, I've run into people saying that--well, you've seen those lights that kind of come off the Shadow copies when they're defeated?" He waits for Akira to nod, then goes on. "They... might be pieces of Persona that are being carved off during the fight."

"No _way_ ," Akira says, looking suitably horrified.

"Just be careful," Yu says. "And if you _can_ avoid a fight, please try and do that. Okay?"

Akira doesn't answer right away, expression stubborn enough to worry Yu slightly. "Will you be okay with that?" he asks Akira.

"I can do it," Akira says.

"You're su--"

" _I can do it_ ," Akira repeats, and for a second the atmosphere between them is tense. Yu hesitates, not quite sure how to explain that yes, he knows that Akira can probably handle this, but that doesn't make him any less worried for him, or the people with him. 

In the end, the moment passes before he has a chance to say anything at all, as Akira fidgets and then says, "Anyway, there's Ken and Koromaru, too. So it's not like I have to do it all by myself."

"Those are the other two...?" He hesitates. "What kind of name is Koromaru?"

"He's a dog," Akira informs him.

Yu considers questioning this, remembers that they have Teddie, and so decides not to. Maybe after this is all over. "Okay," he says. "That's good, that there's a few of you together. Try not to split up, okay?"

"Definitely not," Akira agrees. "Those Shadow copies are--they're weird. I don't think I'd want to run into any of them while I was on my own, or just with Nanako."

Yu can definitely understand this. It had been bad enough during the first tournament, when they were actually fighting each other. But now that their opponents are Shadow copies, it's somehow even creepier. _Better_ , definitely, because Yu would rather fight these fakes than go back to hurting the people he cares about, but there's a certain fear this time around that he hadn't felt at all before. A sick kind of lurch in the pit of his stomach whenever he runs into another person, a little part of his mind that can't stop questioning _are you real or are you just a Shadow_.

"Oh!" Akira says suddenly, turning away from Yu and leaning forward to face the two Velvet Room attendants sitting across from them. "That reminds me, there was something I wanted to ask you."

Yu has to bite back the smile that suddenly bubbles up onto his face. He can't imagine just going to Margaret with the kinds of questions Akira regularly bounces of Lavenza, but then again he's also not sure he'd call Margaret a _friend_ , exactly. Someone he trusts and respects, yes, but she's really not a friend.

Akira and Lavenza absolutely _are_.

"Lavenza," Akira says. "Do you think Nanako could get a Persona?"

"Uh," Yu says, because this doesn't seem like anything close to something they should be worrying about right now. Especially if the whole thing about Persona fragments being carved off during fights with the Shadows is true, the _last_ thing Yu wants is a brand new Persona-user running around Inaba.

"I don't mean right now," Akira says, glancing back at Yu. "But Elizabeth said something when we ran into her about how Nanako might be here now because she could get a Persona someday."

Well, that's a different story. Yu considers how he would feel about Nanako having a Persona at some point in the possibly distant future, and decides that he kind of likes the idea. It seems like he and Akira are always being dragged into dangerous, Shadow filled situations. And if Nanako is ever dragged with them again, the way she had been today, it would probably be a good thing for her to have some way to defend herself. He turns to Margaret and Lavenza, suddenly interested in the answer.

"Anything is possible, of course," Margaret says. "And there's really no way to tell for sure until the moment arrives. If it ever does."

"I would be shocked if she never gets a Persona of her own," Lavenza says, in a much blunter tone than her sister's. "In many cases, the ability to awaken a Persona is a matter of will. When the time comes, will they have the strength of will to face whatever challenge stands in front of them?" She smiles, slightly. "And having met Nanako myself, and knowing that she will grow up with the two of you as role models, I find it very difficult to imagine her without a Persona forever."

" _Cool_ ," Akira says. 

Margaret has the tight lipped expression she wears when she disapproves of the way a conversation is going, and Yu decides to quickly move the conversation along. "We probably should be getting back to..." He hesitates, finding himself not quite able to call the version of Inaba they've come from _the real world_.

"Guess so," Akira says. Then he kind of shifts back on his seat a little, looking sideways at Yu as he asks, "You're... going to save the day, right?"

Yu raises his eyebrows a little.

"I mean--you usually do," Akira says. "And we don't have a lot of time, and..." Another hesitation before he finishes, "And I was talking to Ken earlier. He's only a little older than me--"

Oh no, Yu thinks, because he had not realized that there would be _more_ kids being put in danger here. If Ken is a member of the Shadow Operatives then he'll _probably_ be fine, just like Yu is pretty sure that Akira will _probably_ be fine, but... still.

"And I told him that--that I know I still need to catch up to all of you. And I think I'm okay with that?" He's been fidgeting, looking down at his crossed legs more than at Yu, but he does so now. "Whatever's going on, it's _definitely_ at the top of that tower, I think. And we're at the bottom, we're not going to get there before we run out of time, so I'm really, really hoping that you're going to make it."

There's not a lot of space in the Velvet Room, but Yu manages an only slightly awkward half hug. "It's going to be okay," he promises Akira. "I'm... I _think_ I'm close to the top." And then he only has to do... he doesn't know what. Fight something horrible, he's pretty sure. And fight it _alone_ , if this tournament and the last one have taught him anything about how these things are supposed to work, he's pretty sure he won't be able to do fight with any kind of real support.

"Good," Akira says.

-//-

They get all the way to the outside of the tower before seeing anyone else, which is kind of a relief but also kind of terrifying. Akira doesn't _want_ to fight again, but it's kind of creepy to just keep walking through that red fog and not even know if a Shadow copy of someone is watching them.

"Do you know your way around this school?" Ken asks, as they hesitate at the base of the tower. "Have you been in here before?"

"Only a couple of times," Akira says. "I went to the culture festival last year, and stuff like that. But I'm still in middle school, so I don't have a reason to come here often. Why?"

"I was just wondering if we might have an easier time getting through here if one of us is familiar with the school," Ken says.

"Well then," Rise says. "You're in luck. I go here."

"Oh yeah," Ken says. "Sorry, I forgot about that."

"Kind of hard to remember an idol actually lives in this town, huh," Akira says. From his perspective, since he cares a lot more about the fact that Rise is Yu's friend, a Persona-user, and a member of the Investigation Team, than about the fact that she's an idol. Sometimes he forgets for a while that she's somebody famous in her free time, but he can definitely understand why it might be harder for someone coming in from the outside to believe that someone like Rise would actually attend school somewhere like Yasogami.

" _Akira_ ," Rise says.

"Sorry," he says with a grin. She rolls her eyes at him, and just for a second the mood seems to lighten under the teasing. "But anyway, Ken, since Rise's here we _do_ have someone that's familiar with the school."

" _And_ I'm a navigator," Rise points out. She tilts her head upward to look up at the top of the tower, expression drifting from her earlier half-smile into a definite frown. "I'm not sure if any of that's going to help, though. This isn't anything like what Yasogami is supposed to look like."

"I guess not," Ken admits, as he cranes his neck up to look up at the tower with Rise. "It reminds me a lot of Tartarus. That wasn't very much like the real high school, either."

"It's okay," Nanako pipes up, her small voice bright. "It's all going to be okay, because you guys are the only ones that can fix it." She's been standing a little bit behind the rest of them, where they'll be able to more easily protect her if they run into something dangerous. She moves forward to stand next to Akira now though, grabbing for his hand and leaning against him. He lets her do it, even squeezing her hand a little in case she's worried.

(He's trying to think what Yu would do to help Nanako feel better. He likes to think that when it comes to getting Nanako into trouble, having fun with her or even helping her in the garden, he's a pretty good pseudo-older brother. But Yu's the one that hegoes to when he's upset or scared, so Yu's the one he's trying to imitate now)

"What's Tartarus?" he asks Ken.

"It was what happened to Gekkoukan High School during the Dark Hour," Ken tells him. "We used to go there to fight Shadows. It--was pretty bad."

"Oh," Akira says. He joins Rise in looking up, and Akira does too.

 _I think I'm close to the top,_ Yu had told him when they were together in the Velvet Room. Which means that somewhere high above them, Yu is fighting his way upward to... whatever disaster is waiting up there for him. Akira knows that this little group, him and Rise and Ken and Koromaru and Nanako, they're not going to get to the top before the end of the hour. There's no way they're going to catch up to Yu.

But he's pretty sure that there's other things they can do while they're here. There are other members of the Investigation Team and the Shadow Operatives in Inaba somewhere, and it's common sense to think that most (if not all) of them would start heading here as soon as they saw the tower. They'll be safer if they all meet up, so that's probably what they should try to do.

"Can you tell if there's anyone else around here, Rise?" he asks. 

"I can check," she says, and summons her Persona.

Everyone else waits patiently while she scans the area, and eventually lets the Persona fade. The way that her Persona works, Rise's eyes and most of her face are covered during every scan she does. This is why Akira doesn't realize until the Persona fades that Rise has sensed something that upsets her. "Rise?" he says, taking a step forward.

"There's a lot of interference," Rise says. "But there's someone just inside. Two of them, I think, and one of them is hurt, and one of them is one of those fake Shadows."

"Well then let's go," Akira says. "We have to go help--whoever it is. Do you know who it is?"

"No," Rise says. "Whoever it is that's hurt isn't one of the Investigation Team. And the Shadow just feels like--a Shadow. It could be a copy of anyone."

"Oh no," Nanako says, eyes wide.

They all start moving more or less at the same time, Rise in the front since she's the one that knows where they're going. Yasogami High looks as surreal and twisted as it had during the first tournament, but it's a lot easier to move around through it when they're traveling with a navigator. She takes them down a hall that's much too long to exist in reality, then through a classroom, out the other side, and suddenly into the school's gym.

Where there's a girl Akira doesn't recognize, hung up on a cross, head hanging limp.

"Fuuka!" Ken says. Koromaru barks and bounds forward, trailed by Ken only a step or two behind. 

"Wait!" Nanako calls. "There's supposed to be a Shadow here too, remem--"

Her shout reminds Akira to pull up short, Ken half stumbling to a halt as well. Koromaru is the smoothest out of all of them, and stands a foot or so ahead, growling at something just out of sight. 

Ken considers, and seems to decide that whatever Shadow might be ahead of them is worth the risk of helping his friend. He moves forward, face determined, hand gripping his weapon a little more firmly, tense and careful. Akira pauses long enough to look back over his shoulder at Rise. "Can you stay with Nanako?" he asks. "Please?"

"Yeah," she says. "Of course--be careful, you guys."

Does this count as keeping Nanako and Rise safe, like Yu had asked him to? Akira has no idea, but he's not going to just let Ken and Koromaru take on the Shadow by themselves. He creeps forward, weapon out as he peers around the corner and into the darkness.

There's... a lady in a very, very pink outfit talking to Ken. Akira can tell before he's even close enough to hear the conversation that she's the Shadow. It's Koromaru, mostly, whose ears have gone flat back against his head, his posture absolutely screaming _aggressive dog._

Since she's seen the two of them anyway, Akira abandons stealth and runs up to join the little huddle. "Are we fighting?" he asks, looking at Ken.

"I think we are going to have to fight," Ken says slowly. "Yes. This is--" he starts to gesture toward the pink woman, then pauses. "This is the Shadow copy of another of the Shadow Operatives, Yukari Takeba."

"Enough talk," says the Shadow Yukari. "One of you is going to have to fight me."

She raises her arm and summons the same glowing ring that Akira has seen from earlier Shadow copy fights. It crashes onto the ground around her, as she looks expectantly at Ken and Koromaru, and then (almost as an afterthought, it seems) at Akira.

"We have to pick who's going to fight you?" Akira asks Shadow Yukari. "We can't just all fight at once."

"That would be cheating," she tells him.

Akira shrugs. "Trickster," he says. "Anyway, you're all just trying to get those--" he waves a hand vaguely. "Glowy Persona shards, right? You'd get more of those if we fought together." And he likes the idea of all three of them attacking at once, maybe even overwhelming the Shadow before she has a chance to do too much damage.

"It would still be against the rules," Shadow Yukari says firmly.

Which sounds like a challenge, in Akira's opinion, but he tries very hard to keep his expression unreadable behind his mask. "What do you think, Ken?" he asks. "Do you want to fight, or should I do it?"

"She's my teammate," Ken says, then adds. "Or--you know what I mean. She's _impersonating_ my teammate. I'll take this fight."

Normally Akira would have argued, but in this case, it's exactly what he wants to see. "Okay," he says. "All yours."

And it's a sign, probably, of how recently Akira and Ken have met that Ken just nods and heads forward toward the fighting ring, Koromaru close at his heels. Anyone that's known Akira for a while would have known not to trust how easily he'd backed off there. And, sure enough, when he turns and looks back over his shoulder to check where Nanako and Rise are (back down the hallway a little way, out of range of whatever's about to happen, _hopefully_ , but not out of eyesight) he sees that both of them are giving him extremely skeptical looks.

He grins, and turns back to the fight that's about to start. He knows, from the previous fights, that as Ken gets into the ring, those invisible walls that are _so annoyingly good_ at keeping people away will slam into place, and there will be no way in or out until the fight is over.

So all he has to do is run in at the exact same time, right? Easy.

He wouldn't have managed it, if the Shadow hadn't had her eyes on Ken and Koromaru, but he edges around to the side, and then--just at the last second--dashes through into the ring so that he's standing side by side with Ken.

(Who looks surprised)

"Sorry," he says to the Shadow.

(Who looks _outraged_ )

"I guess it's just more fun this way?" And he gives her the kind of smile that is calculated to be absolutely as annoying as possible.

"It's cheating," the Shadow tells him, like that matters.

"Yeah," Akira says. "You keep saying. But I mean--we're _kind of_ in a rush, we don't want to get hurt, and also your rules are stupid and none of us agreed to them."

"One of you leaves," the Shadow says. "Or we don't fight."

"Or _you_ don't fight, you mean," Akira says. "We'd just have an easier time."

He has gotten very good at annoying people, Akira realizes, as he's able to successfully goad a Shadow into a three on one fight instead of the one on one she'd tried to force them into. They win, of course, because there's three of her and one of them, and Akira doesn't feel guilty at all about how easy it is, or how fast the Shadow goes down.

Especially when the fight is over, and the whole group is able to help Ken's friend--the one he'd called Fuuka--down onto the ground. She's weak, even though there aren't any obvious injuries, and it's like she's had all the energy drained out of her.

It makes Akira pretty happy that they hadn't stopped to fight the way the Shadow wanted them to.

Once Fuuka is sitting on the ground, trying to pull herself together, Akira takes a deep breath and looks upward, toward the ceiling, where _somewhere_ up there, he hopes Yu is still climbing upward. They're not going to make any forward progress at this point, not with _three_ people to protect (Nanako without any Persona at all, Rise with a Persona she can fight with but is still new to, and Fuuka half unconscious, and with a Persona that only does navigation anyway). At best, they can probably hole up and keep everyone safe, but they're just not getting all the way to the top before the end of the hour.

But because it's Yu up there fighting, Akira doesn't feel as worried as he might have if it was anyone else.

-//-

Yu has a bad time, at the top of the tower.

There's--a lot going on, parts of which he pieces together in the moment, and other parts that take a while before he understands. He runs into _Adachi_ , of all people, who is a lot more helpful than he ever had been last year. He learns that all this is because of one person, Sho Minazuki, who has been badly hurt by the Kirijo Group when he was a child, and who apparently wants nothing more than to summon something horrible, to create a world where no one exists but him. 

He gets as far as the _summoning something horrible_ part, using the power carved away from everyone's Persona during the tournament fights. And during the past year, Yu has seen some pretty terrible things. All kinds of Shadows. Izanami. But Hi-no-kagutsuchi is an entirely different kind of terrible, because Yu has to face this one alone. He's used to fighting with his friends, and here he is, alone with nothing but his Persona.

(And somewhere below, as a new host of Shadows swarm around the city, doing everything they can to overwhelm the others. They'd gotten a chance to speak briefly, once the Shadow Operatives' navigator Fuuka recovered enough to join up with Rise in trying to connect to everyone)

(Because of that brief talk, Yu knows that all his friends, and all of the Shadow Operatives, are fighting as hard as they can)

So Yu fights too. He does what he has to do, even though he's _tired_ , even though he has no idea if he can win on his own. 

But he does. He fights, alone, and as hard as he can, and he wins. Just barely. He's exhausted, he's injured, and he's just about ready to pass out cold, but he _wins._

...and then he lasts about thirty seconds more before falling to his knees. The world goes black, and that's the last thing he knows for a little while.

-//-

When he wakes up again, he's lying on the futon in his and Akira's room in the Dojima's house, and everything hurts. 

"Akira!" someone shrieks. " _Akira! Dad! He's awake!"_

Yu's brain takes several more seconds to start processing things, but he does recognize Nanako's voice eventually. He hoists himself up onto his elbow and stares muzzily at her. "Nanako," he says. "Do you think you could..."

"Huh?" She's standing in the bedroom door, shouting downstairs. She looks back at him now though, eyes wide.

"Just--maybe keep from shouting?" he says. "Please?"

" _Oh_ ," Nanako says, dropping her voice immediately. "Sorry, Yu!"

"It's okay," he says. "What--happened?"

"Akira can explain everything better," Nanako says. "But--you're okay? Really okay?"

"I think I will be," Yu says.

Akira comes running up through the open door then, coming full speed up the stairs and turning sideways to dodge around Nanako in the doorway without losing any momentum. "Yu!" he says.

"Shh!" Nanako hisses.

"Are you okay?" Akira asks, dropping his voice too. "Dojima's on the phone with your mom, and she's _pissed_."

"What did he tell her?" Yu asks.

"Something about a bike accident, I think?" Akira says. "He said there's no way your injuries are all going to heal before you have to go home, so he had to tell her something."

That's something to look forward to, then. Yu shoves it aside in his mind for the moment, though, because there are more important things to be worried about right at this moment. "What happened with--" He waves a vague hand. " _Everything_. What happened with everything, Akira?"

"You beat the thing up at the top of the tower," Akira says. "Right?"

"Yeah," Yu says. "I remember that much. But after--"

"Elizabeth showed up," Akira blurts. "I guess she was still hanging around? But after you beat whatever you were fighting--"

"What _was_ it?" Nanako interrupts. "It sounded scary."

"You could hear it?" Yu asks.

Nanako nods, eyes wide.

"It was really loud," Akira agrees. "We could hear it all the way from the base of the tower. But--anyway, _Elizabeth_ showed up, and somehow got all of us into the TV World. And we saw you were passed out, so... so we got you out right away. And everything was back to normal."

"So we brought you back here," Nanako tells him.

"Well, first everyone argued a lot about whether you needed a hospital," Akira adds.

"Then Dad called looking for us and said to bring you home," Nanako adds. "So we did."

"He's okay," Yu says. "Right?" He manages, with some effort, to sit up. "Everyone vanished after the P-1 Tournament showed up on the Midnight Channel."

"Everyone's fine," Akira says. "And back and safe and everything."

Yu gives him a quick, up and down look out of the corner of his eye, because he knows Akira had been fighting, and he's not sure if he's counting himself as part of everyone when he says that _everyone's fine._

"I'm okay too," Akira says, catching the look. "Everyone that was fighting is okay, except that Chie broke her ankle and I guess is going to be on crutches for a little while."

"She kicked a Shadow too hard," Nanako adds. "But Akihiko said it was a _really_ good kick, so she said she was okay with the crutches."

"And Akihiko is...?"

"One of the Shadow Operatives," Akira says. "He was here last time, too. You remember, he's the guy that never put his shirt on."

"Oh yeah," Yu says vaugely. Considering how recently the Shadow Operatives have come into their lives, it's a little weird to hear Akira and Nanako just casually throwing their names around.

"But Chie's going to be fine, is the point," Akira says. "So--everything's okay."

"Okay," Yu says. "Okay, _good_." He lets out a deep breath, feeling like it's the first one he's been able to take since this whole thing started. He feels absolutely relieved, glad that it's _over_ and that everyone had made it through safe. 

He hears footsteps coming up from the kitchen, and then his uncle comes in, scowling as he holds his cell phone up to his ear. Yu winces, because even from halfway across the room, he can recognize his mom's voice. 

"--fine, honestly," Dojima is saying. "Do you want to talk to him?"

The half screeched answer coming up through the phone's speaker is loud enough for _everyone_ to hear. Yu sees Akira and Nanako giving each other a _what's her problem_ look. Yu is reminded that neither of them has ever met his mother. His uncle, who had grown up with her, gives Yu an extremely sympathetic look as he hands the phone over.

"Hi, Mom," Yu says. "I guess you heard about the--"

" _Bike accident_ ," Akira whispers, when Yu blanks on the excuse he's supposed to be using.

"The bike accident," Yu finishes. He mouths _thank you_ and Akira gives him a thumbs up before Dojima wrangles both kids out of the room to give Yu some privacy.

"I heard you'll be black and blue when you come home," his mom says. "This never would have happened if you hadn't insisted on going back to Inaba this week."

"I could have... fallen off a bike anywhere," Yu says, and wonders if this counts as a lie. He _could_ have fallen off a bike and gotten hurt anywhere, that's true. But he hadn't actually fallen off a bike, he'd fought in a tournament for Persona-users and then almost died fighting Hi-no-kagutsuchi, which never would have happened in Tokyo because there are no Shadows to fight in Tokyo, and Yu's not sure if that lie cancels out the part that's the truth. Yu manages to keep the confusion out of his voice only by making an expression of _what is coming out of my mouth right now_ that his mom won't be able to see through the phone.

"I just don't like you being so far away," his mom says. "And hurt, and--"

"Mom," Yu tries to interrupt.

"And I don't like that you're _there_."

Well, to be fair, he probably should have realized already that Inaba was at the bottom of why she's so upset. She'd already been upset about him coming down here for Golden Week, and she'd found out about his post-college plans and been upset about those, too. It's about time, probably, that they had this conversation.

His mom is a good person, even behind the disagreements, the tendency toward ignoring other peoples' opinions in favor of her own, her habit of ignoring small details in favor of the big picture. She's not perfect, but she's not a bad person.

"Mom," Yu says again, and this time he catches her during a pause, so that she hears him. "Mom, I understand that you don't like Inaba. But I do. I like it a lot here, and someday I'm coming back, hopefully permanently." 

Her reaction is a long, drawn out sigh. It could have been exasperation, or tiredness, or a sign she's giving in, and finally ready to listen. The sound coming through the phone's speakers is impossible to interpret. "I just don't understand what you see in that place," she tells him. "There's nothing there, Yu."

Yu takes a deep breath in through his nose, thinking. There _is_ a lot here in Inaba, and even if he had never found the TV World, never learned to summon a Persona or fight Shadows--even then, Yu thinks he would have loved Inaba. There's something about life here that he just... likes. "There is for me, Mom," he says. 

There's a beat or two of silence. Then she says, almost grudgingly, "I don't understand, Yu."

He's grown up hearing stories of Inaba from her that don't match what he's seen for himself at all. He shouldn't be surprised that she can't understand his point of view, because he certainly can't understand hers. 

"I know," he tells her. 

"But I suppose that you're old enough to know what you want," she says. "Or at least, to make your own mistakes."

It's not a ringing endorsement, but it's enough for this one conversation, it's a step, and maybe, eventually--

Well, he'll get her approval or he won't, but either way he knows that he's coming back to Inaba.

When he hangs up the phone a few minutes later and pushes himself out of bed (he's not _that_ hurt, he convinces himself) he finds both Akira and Nanako sitting out on the landing, not at all bothering to hide the fact that they'd been eavesdropping.

"Sounds like everything's okay?" Akira asks.

"Pretty much," Yu tells him. Then he puts too much weight on the wrong part of his body, and winces. "But next time we have to face something horrible like hi-no-kagutsuchi, I think it's your turn to deal with it."

And he's joking, but Akira agrees so enthusiastically that Yu immediately regrets making the joke at all.

Oh well. He protests a little, at first, but doesn't keep it up for long. It's not like anything he says is going to keep Akira from running face first into trouble anyway. And it's not like Yu's planning to _not_ be around to keep an eye on him when things eventually go wrong again.

He lets Akira--and an equally enthusiastic Nanako--chatter on without too much direct input from him. It's over, and everything's fine. There are some worried texts from his friends, which he responds to, assuring them all that he's fine. They make plans to meet up at Junes before the end of the week, when Yu is feeling better, and...

And he sits at the kitchen table, and listens to Akira and Nanako trying to explain the Tournament to Dojima, and watches the incoming messages from his friends, and he thinks about his mom and he feels _bad_ for her.

She just doesn't realize how special this place is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not 100% sure if I like this as an ending, but I am 1,000% sure that I have been writing and rewriting for much too long, and it's time to say screw it and throw this chapter up onto the internet.
> 
> Also I wanted to finish this before any P3 characters actually made cameos in Forearmed, and Mitsuru is in the chapter going up this weekend so I figured I'd better rush this out :p


End file.
